


Convergence

by FletcherHonorama



Series: the Circle, Updated [4]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-12-13 14:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11762295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FletcherHonorama/pseuds/FletcherHonorama
Summary: The crisis is over and life goes on, but there are some loose ends that need tying up - so to speak





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! here begins a little three or maybe four or maybe five-chapter story i've been putting together, taking place in the year after Circle Updated - so this chapter is really just the link between the two, and the story proper will start next chapter. it's mostly written, somewhat organised, so shouldn't be too long of a trek! *fingers crossed*

It took a long time for them to recover from the fire. For Daja, things only got worse after they were all up and moving again, after she’d shaken off the shock and the exhaustion and things went pretty much back to normal. By that time it was just about Christmas, and there was nothing normal at all about a Christmas without Uneny and her mum and her dad. There was nothing comforting, nothing reassuring about her first Christmas as an orphan.

The whole thing had been strange and foreign, and deeply upsetting despite the best efforts of Frostpine and Lark, Rosethorn and even Niko to cheer her up. Daja and the other three kids hadn’t really worked out their connection yet either, and Sandry’s own mourning and Tris’s old resentments had been all blended in with everything burning inside of Daja. Even Briar, who seemed to have spent every Christmas of his life up till now gleefully stealing everything he could get his hands on, had been fairly glum, brought down by the collective bad moods of his three housemates. 

New Years was its own kind of awful, but it wasn’t as bad as Christmas had been, and it was in the first week of January that Daja finally forced herself to come to terms with the fact that this was her home now, for better or worse. She’d be going to school soon enough, with new classes, classmates, teachers. She’d be settling into a new routine, and her old life would fade further and further away from her. Each year, it would hurt less and less, until she would finally be at peace with it.

Or so she hoped.

At least she had friends here, real friends. If she reached out now she could feel them, their minds nearly as familiar to Daja as her own. Daja didn’t like to think too much about what it meant for them to all be so closely bound up together, sharing their thoughts and their senses and sometimes even dreams. She didn’t want to kill the beauty of it, and the comfort it brought her. Daja liked to be alone, but there was a much bigger, scarier kind of alone that had hit her when her family had died, and Daja never wanted to meet with it again. Sandry had done a miracle in that old tin shed, and Daja would owe her for it forever.

Sometimes Daja felt like she should be more surprised at the state of her life these days. She felt like it was the kind of thing that as a sensible person, she should have far more trouble accepting. Sometimes, late at night, she tried to think of how she would explain it to Mum or Dad or Uneny, if she got the chance. Daja was a terrible storyteller, though, and all she could ever come up with was to tell them that she was safe and well and looked after, and that her prayers had been answered. When it came down to it, that was what mattered.

~o~o~

On Christmas Day, a low wooden bookshelf found its way into Tris’s room while she was down at breakfast. It had three shelves, the bottom one the tallest. That one would fit her new atlas and some of the nicer reference books she’d borrowed from Niko, as well as folders and exercise books. She looked at the other two shelves and wondered what the best way to arrange her books would be: purely alphabetically or set out initially by subject matter and then alphabetically within that. 

She didn’t know if one of the others had dropped the hint to Lark and Rosethorn, or if the two women had just worked out that Tris was ready to move in for good. It had been getting very annoying having to fish around in her bag all the time for the books she wanted, but she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask for a shelf. She knew that this was her home now – and apparently everyone else could tell as well – but there was still a big difference between knowing a thing was true and saying it out loud to another person, and Tris didn’t yet have it in her to breach that gap. About wanting to move her books onto a shelf, about finally knowing what it was to feel at home, and about … other things.

Never in a thousand years would Tris have imagined there’d be a shortcut available to her, a way to skip over the hassle that was face-to-face conversation and just to purely and simply communicate. If you had told her a few months ago that soon she would be intimately connected with three strange children, able to read their thoughts and feelings and have them read hers in return, she would have said it sounded like the worst thing she could possibly imagine happening, which when it came to Tris was saying an awful lot.

But it wasn’t.

Tris felt like she had always known the other three, and that she always would know them. It was odd now to look at Daja and think not so long ago Tris had been completely unable to understand her. Not that Tris _always_ understood Daja, or either of the others for that matter, but to not know her at all, to doubt her, distrust her – it was ancient history, getting harder and harder to remember with each day that went by. The world had shifted under Tris’s feet and built itself up from whole new foundations, and this one offered her a much firmer footing.

She got Briar to help her set her books out. Alphabetical order was something he’d need to be able to do in school soon enough, so he needed all the practice he could get. When Sandry knocked on the door and offered to help, Tris knew where the impulse came from, and though she didn’t need any more help, she didn’t turn her friend away. And when Daja came by as well, and just sat on Tris’s bed and watched them without a word, Tris had no complaint to make. She was getting used to company.

~o~o~

It was nice to have a gang again, a real proper gang. Briar had had a few in his time, and it was by far the best way to live. Him and Turtle and Nasri and Tejas had been tight, and before that there was when him and like ten other boys had banded together and called themselves the Lightnings, little kid armbands and gang signs and all. 

This time around was weird because there was just a shit-ton of girls around. Well, girls and women, if you included Rosethorn and Lark, which, when Briar thought about it, you kind of had to. They bankrolled the whole operation, it was their house that they all lived in. So two girls, two women, one boy and Tris.

Thank fuck there was Tris, who even if she didn’t speak boy, at least didn’t speak much girl either. Briar had nothing against girls, but he wasn’t exactly jumping out of his skin to join a girl gang. With both him and Tris in it, you couldn’t call it a girl gang, Briar was pretty sure. That was like one full third of the gang. And then there was Frostpine and Niko too, who maybe weren’t full members but hung around plenty all the same.

So yeah, it all suited Briar just fine. He was in a good place and it had a hell of a lot of perks. He wouldn’t have _chosen_ being housed up with a couple of actual legit adults who got to always be telling him what to do and when to do it, who made rules and made you follow them, but it wasn’t like he’d never lived like that before. And compared with the kinds of rules he’d had to live by before, these ones were barely rules at all. Gentle requests, really. Casual suggestions. A word of advice here and there. The only knives Briar had seen out were in the kitchen and in his own room, and he was the one who’d put them there.

Which he really should be putting them back before anyone finds them.

The thing that was new here, that made his insides twist and his eyes prickle, was that after the fire, after they’d gotten home, he’d slept on and off for what felt like days and days and days and days, and in all that time, everything was soft around him. He was never hungry and he wasn’t scared. When he wanted to get up, somebody helped him. When he went back to bed, somebody tucked him in. Lark’s hands were kind and Rosethorn’s eyes were steady, and sometimes it made him just want to bawl his eyes out.

And once he was up and about again, things felt different. Now he had to be careful about how loud his thoughts were and learn to tune out the others gabbling away in their heads about random shit Briar had no interest in, sure, but even apart from that, things were different. He didn’t feel like a drop-in, like a flyaway. It was like he’d passed some kind of initiation without even knowing it, while he was asleep. They were a real gang now, forged by fire, and this was their turf. All of theirs.

~o~o~

  


Sandry lived her life with a new responsibility now. Tris, Briar, Daja and her were a circle that she had made and a circle that she was determined to protect. When she’d joined them together, she’d expected the connection would wear off once they stopped doing the big magic in the fire, or just fade away over time afterwards, but it hadn’t stopped once the fire was gone, and it hadn’t gone away after they’d slept the night in that horse university, and then she’d found that perfect, unbroken circle in her pocket and she knew it was forever. She’d made it so.

She wondered sometimes whether the others would still have offered their magic to her if they’d known what it would mean. She wondered if she’d have dared to ask them to, if _she_ had known. They had all fought so hard against Sandry when she’d simply been trying to build friendships, to get along and to live together happily, and then the space of a few terrible, terrible hours, they had become soulmates. The others might laugh at Sandry for calling it that, but there was no better word Sandry knew.

In the beginning, Sandry had still felt ashamed about being afraid of the dark. They had all been scared in the fire, yes, and shared each others’ fear, but that was something different. That was something really to be afraid of. It had been justified. Sandry hated the thought that now if she had a bad dream, one or all of the others might share it with her and they would know how little it took to freak her out in the safety of her own bed, in her own home. They would know how much she pretended to be okay when she wasn’t. They would _know_.

But over time, that feeling faded. Every time she felt Briar’s heart jump out of his chest when Little Bear barked suddenly nearby, it faded. As she slowly grew familiar with the self-loathing spiral of Tris’s thoughts when something reminded her of home, it faded. As she struggled to come to terms with Daja’s bitterness that she’d found the people she belonged with in a place she could never belong in at all, it faded. They all had things they weren’t proud of; Sandry wasn’t any different.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of family Sandry had always dreamed of, but then, she’d never quite known what it was a family was supposed to be. She had two parents, who had loved her very much, and she had Pirisi, who had been her nurse and nanny and tutor and, as far as Sandry was concerned, her friend. It was the four of them, and they travelled together around the world, with assistants, publicists and a lot of other people who Sandry never got to meet or knew who they were. 

So if this was an odd kind of family, Sandry didn’t care. So had her old one been. As a girl who had spent all her childhood moving from place to place, never allowed to settle, she had never quite come to grips with the concept of _home_ , until now. Now she had a home, and all that was left was to live in it, and she couldn't wait. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah so in the now well-established tradition of this series, this chapter took a bit longer than i'd hoped. sorry! thanks for reading and kudosing and commenting and waiting, and as always i have high hopes that the next one will be out soon. enjoy!

Tris was ready first. Daja was had all her things together but she was still upstairs praying, and Sandry was busy fussing over her hair and her dress and her shoes and her endless, endless stationery. Tris didn’t believe in religion, and she never would, but there was no question that Daja’s way of dealing with nerves was far more effective than Sandry’s. And on top of that, and most importantly, it was _quiet_.

And speaking of quiet. Tris lay her bag down by the back door and reached out cautiously for Briar. He was out in the garden with Rosethorn, Tris knew, but it wasn’t like him to stay quiet and out of the way when Sandry was in a frenzy. At the very least, he’d usually be listening and laughing, even if he didn’t say anything.

 _It’s not that funny_ , he said. _You know Sandry’s not used to school like you are._

Tris stood there for a moment. Rosethorn was telling Briar about the different varieties of cockatoos that he might see in the area, and he wasn’t even slightly listening. 

_I know that_ , she said. _I’m not laughing, am I?_

_Yeah and why would I be? That’ll be me in a little bit._

_Nonsense. You could come with us today if you wanted. You’re smart, you’ll catch up and get ahead in no time._

_Maybe_ , said Briar. _But I don’t –_

Rosethornsnapped her fingers right in front of his face, and Tris jumped out of her skin. Briar was gone from her mind once she’d recovered, and she didn’t know whether the shock had jolted them apart or if he’d intentionally shut her out. Tris wouldn’t blame him if he had; he was the one who was going to be home with Rosethorn all day, and she was not a person you wanted annoyed with you.

Tris glanced at her watch. They weren’t late yet, but the likelihood of their being early was shrinking by the minute. 

Sandry came down the hallway then, with her bag on her back and her shoes in one hand. “Hi,” she said. Her cheeks were a little bit pink, but her poise was back. “Are we running late?”

“No,” said Tris. “Not yet.”

“Where’s Briar?”

“Why are you asking me?”

Sandry stared at her for a moment then shrugged. “Where’s Lark?”

“Upstairs.”

Sandry put her bag next to Tris’s and sat down to put her shoes on. “I wish Briar was coming with us,” she said. “It feels so wrong to leave him behind.”

“You can’t possibly be going to miss him. We have telepathy.”

Daja came into the room then, looking no different than she ever did despite everything Tris knew she was feeling inside. “I wouldn’t get used to saying that out loud,” she said to Tris. “Life’s difficult enough as it is.”

 _You can’t possibly be going to miss him,_ Tris said. _We have telepathy._

“Let’s get everything in the car, then,” said Lark, following behind Daja. “We’ll do a last-minute check, then we’re off.”

Tris offered a hand up to Sandry, who took it with a grin. “Here we go!” she said.

“The boy’s not even coming to see us off, then?” said Daja.

“He’s with Rosethorn,” said Tris. _And he hates the thought of school._

 _He’s not even_ going _to school._

_But he’ll have to soon enough._

“Let’s not be late,” said Sandry. She followed Lark out the back door with a bounce in her step and Tris had a sudden memory of coming to this house for the first time, just a few months ago, glumly following in the wake of a cheerful, enthusiastic, likeable girl who Tris already deeply resented and was certain she always would.

It was a new and frankly terrifying concept for Tris that sometimes it was better to be wrong than it was to be right. She put it from her mind and set off after Sandry. Daja walked beside her, frowning and looked out across the garden as they went.

 _If you want to talk to him, talk to him_ , Tris advised her. _It’s not hard._

Daja shook her head. _I miss Uneny_ , she said. _That’s not Briar’s fault._

Tris instinctively backed away from that thought and everything contained in it. Daja was still fairly private about her family, and Tris didn’t like to think about her own family at all. 

But Daja had volunteered the comment, and Tris couldn’t just ignore it. She put her hand lightly on Daja’s arm and then took it off again, hoping it was the right gesture to make. Daja’s lips turned very slightly upwards and she bumped gently sideways into Tris as they walked before straightening up and continuing on without a word.

They put their schoolbags in the back of the car: Sandry, Daja, Tris. Lark’s eyes flickered towards the garden as well, but she didn’t say anything.

 _Come and say goodbye_ , Tris said to Briar, not bothering to see if he wanted to listen. _Everyone’s being weird without you._

 _But I’ll miss the story about the three red-tailed black cockatoos in fucken 1854,_ said Briar. _Let me tell you, it’s a thriller._

“Are we ready?” said Lark.

“No,” said Tris. “Briar’s coming over.”

 _That’s dirty pool, Chandler._ But he said to Rosethorn, “They’re going, one sec,” and wiped his hands off on his shorts.

He came jogging up past the compost bins and came to an awkward stop in front of them. “Oh hey,” he said, halfway between amusement and distate. “You all match.”

“Yes,” said Tris. “We’re uniform.”

The other three all just looked at her, but Lark laughed. She smiled at Tris, said, “Just a few minutes,” to all of them and got into the car.

Everyone looked at each other. Nobody said anything.

“This isn’t as big a deal as you’re all making it,” said Tris. “We’re going to be back by four.”

Sandry took two steps forward and hugged Briar, who dutifully hugged her back. “See you this afternoon!” she said, before going and getting into the car.

“You really don’t have to hug me,” Briar said to Tris and Daja, who hadn’t been even faintly considering it.

“I’ll miss you,” Daja told him. “A bit.” She followed Sandry.

“I won’t miss you,” said Tris. “But I still think you should be coming with us.”

Briar shrugged. “Tell that to O’Brien and Tilly and Niko and Lark.”

“You’re supposed to call them Ms O’Brien and Ms Tilly.”

He looked at Tris like she’d suggested drinking spoiled milk. “Yeah or maybe I’ll just never go to school, and _not_ call them that.”

 _We’ll be late_ , Daja said.

“See you this afternoon, then,” said Tris.

“Yup.” 

Tris got into the car, and when she looked out of the window Briar had already turned his back and started back towards the garden.

“Everyone ready?” said Lark.

Daja was morose, Sandry anxious and Tris disgruntled, but they all said yes, and then Lark started the car and they were on their way.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Briar’s morning routine was set. He got up early enough to go out in the garden with Rosethorn, and then he came back in when the others were all getting up and getting ready to go to school. He wouldn’t be going himself till next term, they said, but he was supposed to develop his school routine or some shit so when they finally sent him there, he’d already know the drill. As if he hadn’t learned from a metric shit-ton of experience how to adapt in no time to a sudden change in circumstances, or something.

But hey, it wasn’t that hard. Wash up, eat breakfast, change into non-gardening clothes, feed the dog when it was his turn, get all his stuff together for whatever school stuff he was supposed to be learning that day. Piece of cake, and it kept them happy.

He came out of his room one morning just before eight thirty with his maths folder and the little abacus Frostpine taught him how to use and saw Sandry crouched in the doorway of her room fighting with the zip on her schoolbag, so he stopped to watch. Sandry’s jaw was set and she had her serious frown on that said if that bag knew what was good for it, it would sort itself the hell out sooner rather than later. That kind of thing was always a good show.

Sandry was hell on that bag, stuffing it full of all kinds of crap to take every day just in case she needed it. Like all her craft shit, and spare clothes, and her big notebook diary thing, and a pencilcase the size of a brick, and probably a sewing machine or ten in there as well. Even Tris, who loved and worshipped books and obsessed about school, didn’t load up so big.

So no shit the zip was broken. Briar was surprised it had lasted more than a month in the first place. 

A few minutes after Briar had started watching, Sandry sat back on her heels and glared up at him, her hair gone all wispy out of its braids already. “Can you help me, or are you just going to stand there and watch?”

“It’s busted,” said Briar. “You busted it.”

“I know how to fix it,” Sandry insisted. “I just don’t have enough hands. If you hold the two sides together, I’ll be able to run the zip along.”

Briar seriously doubted that, but he didn’t want to get in an argument when she was just going to be gone all day anyway. He put his stuff back on his bed, came out and knelt down beside Sandry, grabbed the two sides of the bag where she pointed and tried to look optimistic and helpful. He did that for about a minute while Sandry tried to get the zip bits to run together properly, but no matter how many times she tried it the thing just wouldn’t go.

“Why won’t it work?” she said, exasperated. “Just –” She tried one last time, with all her might, to force the zip along, and when it caught and jammed again, she pulled her hands away in disgust.

“Use my bag if you want,” said Briar. “I don’t use it anyway. But you know if you break it, you buy it.”

Sandry sighed and stood up. “Thanks. I won’t break it.”

When Briar let go of Sandry’s bag, it didn’t sag open like he was expecting. First off he thought maybe Sandry had gotten the zip to work and just neither of them had realised, but then he looked closer.

“Hey Sandry,” he said. “Is this what you meant to do, or …”

Sandry looked down at him. “Is what?”

Briar pointed. If you didn’t look properly, you’d think the bag was zipped closed. Actually the zip hadn’t interlocked at all, but the two halves of it were sticking together like –

“Oh, sugar!” said Sandry, her eyes going wide. “Did I do that?”

“Sure as hell wasn’t me.”

Sandry knelt down again and pulled the two sides gingerly away from each other. “They are,” she said in wonder, pushing them together and pulling them further away over and over again like she was flexing a rubber band. Then she let go, and they clicked themselves together again.

“So you _could_ fix it,” said Briar with a grin. “Shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Sandry went and got the spare house key from by the door and then held it out towards the bag. When she let go, it sprung away from her and locked onto the metal of the zip.

That was sick as. _Daja, check it out_ , Briar said. _Sandry’s coming for your crown._

 _What?_ said Daja. _What do you –_

 _I didn’t mean it!_ said Sandry. _Daja, do you know how to undo magnets?_

_Can I finish brushing my teeth first?_

_No,_ said Briar. _Absolutely not. Drop everything._

 _Have I ever told you before,_ said Daja, _what an incredibly helpful sort of a person you are?_

_Yeah, heaps of times. But I try not to listen, else I’ll get bigheaded._

_Can you fix it though, Daja?_

_Of course. I’ll be down shortly._

Briar looked at Sandry, who was staring at her bag, deep in thought. “So how’d you do it?” he asked.

“I just wanted to fix it. I don’t know what happened.”

“That’s magic for ya,” said Briar.

“Yes,” Sandry said, but she was frowning. “I suppose.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

If Daja had done as Frostpine suggested and had a practice go before the real one, she probably would have been finished a lot earlier than four in the afternoon. But Daja had never been able to bring herself to do intentionally shoddy work, even for practice, so each snip, each tap, chip or knock with a hammer, each twist with the pliers was the very best Daja had in her. She had been calm and careful with the little bits of welding she had to do, and Frostpine had given her a big grin and a high-five when she was finished. “Superstar,” he’d said. “Deadly.”

It was hard to wrap up a project, even a small one like this. Daja was very glad she had decided on a policy of finishing all her homework before she came to work with Frostpine; she had nothing hanging over her head while she was here, no time demands and no unfinished business, so she could spend as much time as she liked fiddling around with it and putting on the “finishing touches” long, long after the thing was actually finished.

Frostpine finally called time on the afternoon when Daja was shining up each petal for about the dozenth time. Daja put down the wire brush reluctantly and sat back on her stool.

“Got your eye on someone to give it to?” Frostpine asked with a grin in his voice. “Pretty boy, pretty girl?”

It never really occurred to Daja to answer the question; she was too busy looking at what she’d achieved. Rosethorn or Briar would probably have comments about how roses actually looked like this or that, or there were totally the wrong number of petals, or where were the thorns, Daja _,_ but Daja hadn’t set out to make a _real_ flower, she’d set out to make _this_ one. And here it was, and it was a job bloody well done, if she said so herself.

Copper was so nice and easy to work with. You could dent it and bend it and shape it any which way, all by hand, and once you were done, it would hold. And the rusty red-gold was perfect for a rose, and it shone so very nicely when you polished it up.

“Or,” said Frostpine, “you could keep it.”

“Yeah,” said Daja softly. “I think I’ll keep it.”

~o~o~o~

Briar, grinning like a fool, had grabbed an old flowerpot from the shed and packed it full of soil from the garden. “You gotta treat a flower right.”

“I was going to put it in my room,” said Daja, looking at his muddy fingers. “My very nice carpeted room.”

“Unless you’re planning on chucking handfuls of dirt round the place, you’re fine,” said Briar. “That’s what the pot’s for. Holds it in, you know.”

Sandry and Tris were both watching. Tris was amused, Sandry curious. It _was_ silly to put a metal flower in a pot with soil, but it wasn’t like Daja had any better ideas of where to put it. She just hadn’t thought that far ahead.

She took the pot from Briar, whose fingers were still dirty. “Just until I think of something else,” she said.

Tris had a glint in her eye. “Don’t forget to water it,” she said when he grinned at her.

“And slug pellets,” said Sandry, laughing. “You don’t want it to get eaten.”

“Ha ha,” said Daja. “You’re all hilarious.”

They all followed her in to watch her put the pot on a shelf, like it was some kind of ritual they all needed to witness.

“Put it near the window,” said Briar. “Needs sunlight.”

“Ah, yes,” said Tris. “For the photosynthesis.”

Briar tapped his nose twice. “Exactly.”

“The show’s over,” Daja told them, trying to look annoyed and no doubt failing completely. “Nothing more to see.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Sandry with a big grin. “I love it.” She hugged Daja and left the room, and the other two went after her. Daja allowed herself one moment more with her rose, running her finger along the grooves in its petals. An odd feeling grew up inside her, warm and bubbling and slightly breathless, but when she took her hand away, the feeling subsided.

Daja went to bed smiling. It had been a very good day.

~o~o~o~

And in the morning, the rose had a leaf.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The first time Tris called for her, Sandry convinced herself she’d imagined it. The thought from Tris was quiet, careful, soft – nothing like Sandry had ever heard from Tris before.

The second time came with more urgency. _Sandry_ , said Tris. _Is this you?_

It took Sandry a moment to understand what Tris meant. When she shifted to look through Tris’s eyes, she realised straight away what had happened. _Not me, but it’s happened to me before. Hold on._

She hurried upstairs and into Tris’s room, knocking a few times on the doorframe as she went through. Tris knew she was coming, but Tris alsodemanded that people always, always knocked, and when Tris had a rule it was always 100 percent set in stone.

Tris was sitting on her bed, and Little Bear was sitting on the floor beside it. When he saw Sandry he moved like he was going to stand, but a quick word from Tris had him planting his bottom back onto the ground, though it kept wiggling back and forward with the wagging of his tail.

Sandry looked at Tris’s hand, which was hopelessly tangled in their dog’s fur.

“This happened to you?” said Tris.

Sandry nodded. “With Cyrus.” When Tris just stared at her blankly, Sandry explained, “He’s an alpaca.”

Tris looked back at her hand and frowned. “Why?”

Sandry laid her hand over the top of Tris’s and let her magic seep into Little Bear’s fur. “The fibres liked me, and I didn’t realise.”

“The fibres liked you,” said Tris flatly. 

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m fairly sure fibres don’t like _me_.”

“Try telling them that,” said Sandry. 

Neither of them said anything more until Tris’s hand was free again. Little Bear let out a quiet woof, got to his feet and shook out his coat.

“Sorry, Little Bear,” Tris said to the dog. She looked at him uncertainly, then at Sandry. “Does it happen to you a lot?”

Sandry shook her head and hopped up on the bed beside Tris. “Not since the first time. I didn’t have much control over my magic back then.”

“I’d say you’ve got even less control over it now,” said Tris, taking her glasses off and wiping them, “if it’s coming out of me.”

Sandry looked at Tris, who put her glasses back on and met her gaze squarely. Even the glasses couldn’t hide the real dismay in her eyes.

“It wasn’t my magic,” Sandry said. “I’d know if it was.”

“Then this must be a new kind of dog-fur-related _weather_ I’ve just never heard of before,” Tris said, her voice thick with sarcasm. 

“Were you trying to do magic?” Sandry asked, thinking of zippers and magnets.

Tris shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes I just –” She paused midsentence, searching for a word.

“I know what you mean,” said Sandry. “I do the same thing. You don’t do anything but you just … _feel_ it. It’s nice.”

Tris nodded and looked away.

“Little Bear seems fine,” Sandry said, deciding that things were getting far too gloomy when nothing serious had actually gone wrong. “He wasn’t even really upset about it, he was wagging his tail. No harm done.”

Tris didn’t look impressed.

“Okay, well, I’d better get back to it,” said Sandry. “I’m doing that hero poster thing for school, have you finished that?”

Tris ignored the question, but Sandry was used to that by now. When a conversation was over, it was over. She shut the door behind her when she left and tried to shake off the nerves that were crawling all over her.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 _Just tell him you never saw me_ , the voice said. _It’s not complicated!_

Tris knew by now that she couldn’t stop the voices. Thanks to Niko, they didn’t scare her the same way they used to, but it still wasn’t a pleasant experience. Out in the country, she didn’t hear quite as many as she used to in Melbourne. There was definitely something to be said for low population density.

 _I can’t lie to him, man_ , a second voice said. _I can’t!_

“Who _is_ that?” said Sandry, looking around nervously. “Is that –”

_It’s either that or tell him the truth, numbnuts! You’d rather tell him the fucking truth? All of it?_

Briar pressed his hands over his ears firmly, then lifted them off again. 

_I don’t want to, but he’ll know! He always knows!_

“I don’t like this,” said Daja, her jaw set firmly.

“This is that voices thing you told us about,” Sandry said to Tris. “Voices on the wind.”

Briar had his head cocked to the side. Tris thought maybe she should tell him that his ears had nothing to do with it at all, but no doubt he’d work it out for himself eventually.

_Why don’t we just … go. We can go! I have an uncle in Wagga._

_Christ, Jacko was right. He always said you were a gutless fucking wonder, I thought he was just being dramatic. Well fuck –_

Daja closed the window firmly, and the room was quiet. 

“Hey,” Briar protested. “I was listening to that.”

“Yeah, we all were,” said Daja, coming back to sit down. “Personally I’m not a fan.”

“Neither am I,” said Tris. “But here we are.”

“I feel like I’ve been spying,” Sandry said, wriggling around in her beanbag. “Feels icky.”

“That really just happens to you?” said Briar. “Just randomly?”

“Yes, it really does.”

“So … do you reckon you could do it on purpose?”

“Briar!” said Sandry.

“What? I’m just asking. It’s a question. There’s no such thing as a stupid question, remember?”

“I’m sure I could do it on purpose,” said Tris. “But I’m certainly not going to learn how if it means _you’ll_ be able to do it as well.”

Briar made a disgusted noise and shook his head. At least nowadays he didn’t say, “ _Girls_.”

“It is getting a bit like that, isn’t it,” Daja said to Tris, who unfortunately knew exactly what she meant.

“It’s getting a _lot_ like that,” said Sandry. “Yesterday I didn’t realise the tray of samosas had only just come out of the oven and I picked it up in my bare hands. And look.” She held her hands up, palm outwards, to show them completely unblemished.

“Your cotton thingummies came after me the other day,” said Briar. “When I grabbed them off Lark for you.”

“Came after you?” said Daja.

“Yeah,” said Briar. “Like they wanted to climb out of the basket and shit.”

“At school the other day when I snapped the heads off the agapanthus, like you said, it – it hurt,” said Daja. “Just a bit.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to tell Niko,” said Tris.

“No we don’t,” Briar retorted.

“I think we do,” said Daja. “I mean, this didn’t happen straight away after the fire. It’s been months, and it’s just starting now?”

“He’ll ask about the circle,” said Sandry.

“Don’t see why we’d have to tell Niko anyway,” Briar went on. “How’s it his business exactly?”

“He does have a PhD in, you know, magic,” said Daja.

“Yeah and how’s it his _business_ but?”

“Fine, tell Rosethorn then,” said Tris. “And you know what she’ll do? She’ll tell Niko straight away.”

“He’ll ask about the circle,” Sandry repeated more urgently.

“He doesn’t know it exists,” said Daja. “How could he ask about it?”

“She means he’ll ask questions and she’ll feel like she has to tell him about the circle,” said Briar. “Sandry, you don’t have to tell him shit even if he asks, and especially not if he doesn’t.”

“I know that,” Sandry snapped. “But not everyone’s as good of a liar as you.”

“So just don’t tell them anything. We’ll work it out. We’ll keep good hold on our magic and not let it out in weird ways.”

“And how are we going to do that when it’s not even our own magic?” said Daja. “I didn’t even know I was doing magic when I brought that flower to life. I wasn’t trying to do anything at all.”

“I don’t want to tell them about the circle either,” said Tris. “You know I don’t.” They all looked at her, and she felt the flush rise up her cheeks. “But we know what our magic can do when it’s out of control.”

“Nothing bad has really happened,” said Sandry. “Right?”

“We’re going to wait until something bad does happen?” Daja said doubtfully. “That doesn’t sound like the greatest idea.”

“Growing pains,” said Sandry hopefully. “It’s just growing pains. It’ll wear off.”

Looking at it sensibly, there was only one thing to do. Daja obviously thought they should tell, and she didn’t see a problem with doing so. Tris and Sandry knew they should tell, but neither of them wanted to. And Briar – sometimes Tris thought Briar liked keeping secrets just out of sheer bloodymindedness. This time, though, he seemed deadly serious.

“You said you were gonna keep it safe,” he said to Sandry. “That’s what you said.”

Sandry nodded. “And I am.”

“So that’s that,” said Briar. “We’re not telling.”

Tris looked at Daja, who had that blank look on her face that meant she was thinking hard. Tris waited, and Sandry and Briar sat and waited as well. When Daja was having a serious think, it could take a little while.

After a longish silence, Daja came to her decision. “I’ll keep it a secret if you all want me to,” she said reluctantly. “I’m not going to go running behind anyone’s back and telling tales.”

“Yeah,” said Briar. “Snitches get –”

“Shut up,” said Tris, in perfect time with Daja.

“I agree,” said Sandry quickly. “Shut up.”

“Whatever,” said Briar. “We’re not telling, but.”

Sandry breathed a big sigh of relief. “Good.”

Daja didn’t say anything more.

Tris wanted to argue with them, to make a logical, rational argument for seeking expert advice on what could be a very, very serious problem, but whenever she thought of any person other than Sandry, Briar or Daja getting their hands on their circle and finding what Tris had put into it – what they had _all_ put into it – her mind shut down and all the words fizzled out on her tongue. 

So she nodded. Nothing really bad had happened, and if there was any trouble, she was sure they could work it out between them. They’d done it before, and they could do it again.

It would be fine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again, here is another chapter for you all! thanks for this chapter go to the nanowrimo melbourne cup day write-in, which i shamelessly piggybacked on today in order to finally wrestle this chapter into actual publishable form. i hope you all enjoy the finished product, and i know i really shouldn't say it, with the track record i have, but i ... am optimistic that the next chapter will take less time to put together than this one did.
> 
> happy reading!

Tris considered that by now she had gained a good amount of control over her magic. Niko might not agree with her, but no doubt that was because he didn’t really understand how _completely_ out of control it had been, only a few months ago. He was a very intelligent man, quite possibly a genius, but when he spoke about the intersection between magical control and emotional control, Tris could tell he didn’t really understand how deeply it went. 

She had come a long way, anyway. Even Niko couldn’t deny that. She still got angry, and there was still fear, but she didn’t think she was in much danger any more of physically manifesting it around her. If she wanted to use magic, she could use it, and the only time it popped out of her by accident any more was when it was someone else’s.

And therein lay the problem. So one Saturday morning in March, Tris had decided to just try not to use the magical connection the four of them had. If she didn’t use it, if she blocked it off, then the magic wouldn’t cross over. That was the theory, and she had been testing it for all of ten minutes when she couldn’t find her hairbrush and had asked Daja if she’d seen it around anywhere, and the problem was Daja had been downstairs feeding Little Bear and Tris had been upstairs in their bathroom, and Tris hadn’t realised until about thirty seconds after the exchange that the question hadn’t come out of her mouth but her mind.

But she had tried again. She had concentrated, used her self-control and all the discipline she had, and she still hadn’t been able to block out the blast of happiness Sandry felt a little while later, or the simmering indignation that grew in Briar slowly afterwards.

“You can’t do it,” Daja said to her once they were all piled into the car and waiting for Lark. “I tried too.”

“Can’t do what?” said Sandry.

“Disconnect,” said Daja. “So the magic won’t spill.”

“So that’s why you were so far up your own arse this morning,” Briar said, kicking the back of Tris’s seat. “And while you had your fingers stuck in your ears and your head underground, we all got roped into this crap. Hope you’re happy.”

“Don’t call it crap,” said Daja, before Tris could say anything. “It matters to Lark.”

“Don’t mind him, he’s just having a whinge,” said Sandry.

Briar told her to fuck off, of course, but it was equally affectionate as it was annoyed. That was the thing about Briar. He was such a tangle of emotions that there was never any danger that one single would grew so strongly in him that it took him over. 

“Christ, go back to the ostrich act, would you?” he said. “I don’t need that psychoanalysis crap in my head.”

“That’s not psychoanalysis,” Tris informed him. “It’s what scientists call an ob-ser-vation.”

“Get fucked.”

“I thought we didn’t want to disconnect, though,” said Sandry, who never let a topic of conversation go until she was finished with it. “And we can’t, anyway, not with the circle.”

“I know,” said Tris. “But it would be good to know if us stopping using the connection all the time might stop the magic from crossing over as well.”

“Or slow it down, at the least,” said Daja. “I mean, we made our decision, but I still don’t think it was the right one.”

Lark came out of the house then, with a big bag over her shoulder, and kissed Rosethorn goodbye at the back door.

Daja shook her head. “Why isn’t she coming?” she murmured.

“Got better things to do,” Briar said pointedly.

“Maybe she doesn’t like cricket,” said Sandry.

“She doesn’t,” Tris said. “She hates it.”

Tris didn’t have to turn her head; she could feel the curiosity radiating off the lot of them. “If you paid attention, you’d notice,” she said.

Lark put her bag in the back of the car and hurried around to the driver’s seat. “Sorry,” she said, a little out of breath. “It’s amazing how far the contents of a kitbag can spread over a single winter. Thank you for being so patient.”

“No worries at all,” said Briar, suddenly composed and angelic.

“Are you excited to play?” said Sandry.

Lark paused, like it was the kind of question where serious consideration needed to be given to the answer. “I am,” she said.

Daja poked Briar pointedly.

 _Okay, okay,_ he said. _I’ll be good._

Tris dropped out of the communication, trying to think of something else, anything else that could be done to stop the magics from melting together. It looked like a long, boring day ahead of her; surely she’d be able to come up with something by the end of it.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

When they pulled into the carpark, Sandry felt butterflies in her stomach. They were a nice kind of butterflies, ones that made her step lighter, like she was floating along with them. Every time she took a step further into her life here, sharing it with her new family, it was like the world got a little bit bigger and more colourful around her. Today they were sharing something of Lark’s, and from what Sandry had gathered from even just six months living here, local sports were a key part of the fabric of a country town, so it was a good thing to get involved in.

The cricket ground had two ovals set diagonally apart from each other, with the gaps in between them taken up on one side by a pavilion and on the other by food vans and a stand-alone toilet block. On one of the ovals there was already a match going on, with what looked like high school boys. That ground was the only one with any stands, and they looked about half-full, and there was quite a lot of people scattered all the way around the ground.

Frostpine met them at the pavilion. He was wearing a big straw hat, a pale yellow shirt, dark shorts and bright red thongs. He was carrying a big esky with a picnic blanket draped over it, and in his other hand a huge closed umbrella.

“How are we all?” he said.

“Good!” said Sandry.

“Good,” said Daja.

“Peachy,” said Briar.

“All under control,” Frostpine announced to Lark.

“Good luck!” Sandry said.

“Thank you,” said Lark. She looked around at all of them. “Enjoy your day, don’t give Frostpine too much trouble.”

“Uh-huh,” said Briar. “So how much is too much?”

“I’ll leave that to you to negotiate,” said Lark. “I’ve got to go in.”

“Have a good game,” said Daja. “We’re cheering for you.”

Because she was still carrying her huge bag, Lark just laid her hand on Daja’s shoulder instead of giving her a hug. Then she waved goodbye to them all and went up the steps into the pavilion.

“Okay,” said Frostpine. “Where do we set up?”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Sandry had been keen to learn the rules of cricket properly, which she’d never really been able to follow before, but from the combined efforts of Daja, who had some idea of what was going on, Frostpine, who mixed up real information with barefaced lies and ridiculous jokes, and Briar, who’d picked up on Frostpine’s mood and was determined to out-troll him, by the end of the first half Sandry was much more confused than she’d been at the start of the day.

Some things she’d been able to follow, though. She knew how the scoring worked, and what an over was, and some of the ways a batter could go out. The spin bowler, a tiny woman with blue hair and a very loud voice, had taken six wickets, including what Frostpine called a “shemozzling” and Daja called a “stumping” of the other team’s best batter. Lark had taken two wickets and one very good catch at “fine leg”, which Briar had laughed at, but Daja backed up Frostpine, and so Sandry looked it up on her phone, and there it was.

 _See, this is fun_ , Sandry said to Briar once all the other team was out and everyone had gone into the pavilion for the halftime break.

Briar didn’t say anything, which meant she was right.

“Who wants to go for a walk around?” said Sandry. “It looks like the game’s still going on the other oval, we could go and explore and then come back when the second half starts.”

“No thanks,” said Tris, turning a page of her book. She’d been reading it on and off the whole time, not joining in the cricket conversation but following it closely enough to help Sandry from time to time when she’d forgotten something or when Frostpine was being particularly silly. It looked like there were only a few pages left now.

“I’ll come,” said Daja. “Briar?”

“Yeah nah,” he said, slowly lowering himself from sitting down to lying on his back. “I’ll look around a bit later.”

“Why not together?” said Sandry.

He put his hat over his face and flopped his arms out to the side. “Can’t be stuffed.”

Sandry turned back to Tris. “If we wait till you’re finished, will you come?”

Tris didn’t answer.

 _Tris?_ said Sandry.

Her friend looked up, with a jolt of distracted annoyance. _What?_

_If we wait till you’re finished, will you come?_

“I have an article to read as well after this,” she said.

“Just you and me, then,” said Daja, climbing to her feet. _I wouldn’t waste time trying to convince them._

 _Smart,_ said Briar.

All of Tris’s attention was already back on her book, and her thoughts were taken up by people called Francis Bacon and William Whewell and a whole lot of scientific terms that Tris clearly understood but Sandry couldn’t follow.

 _Leave her to it,_ said Daja. _Let’s go._

“Be free,” said Frostpine, fishing around in the esky. “Just don’t leave the park.”

“We won’t,” said Sandry.

“Do you have money for lunch, if you want it?”

“Yes.”

“Rightio, then,” he said. “Have fun.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Daja and Sandry took a long, slow walk around one oval, then the other. After the good nature and competitive spirit of the women’s game, Daja found the boys’ cricket oddly intense and aggressive. They looked to be 14 or 15, about Uneny’s age, but whenever she tried to imagine him here with her, maybe playing cricket with all these white boys, the thought sputtered and died before it got anywhere. It was like if she tried to open the “Uneny” file, nothing here in this place knew how to read it. System error.

“Did he like cricket?” Sandry asked, as they stopped and took a break up on the hill by the road, looking down at the boys setting up ready for another over.

“Not really,” said Daja. “He played rugby for a while, but Mum and Dad finally let him quit last year. He’s not really competitive, you know. He just liked messing about with his mates.”

Sandry’s sympathy seeped through to Daja, and the two of them stood quietly for a while. The batsman at the crease blocked three deliveries then hit a double through the covers, turned for a third run and got sent back by his teammate.

“Is that mid-wicket?” said Sandry.

Daja smiled. “Mid-wicket’s the other side. That’s cover.”

Sandry sighed. “There should be a manual.”

“You can ask Lark about it, she might actually teach you properly.”

“Mmm,” said Sandry. “It’s kind of fun not knowing.”

On the next delivery, the batsman got a thick edge and the ball flew wide of the slips for four.

“That’s the slips,” said Sandry. “And past them is gully.”

“Full marks,” said Daja. She glanced over at the other oval and saw all the fielders taking up position. “They’ve started back up over there,” she said. “Want to head back?”

“Oh, whoops!” said Sandry. “I said we’d be back for the second half.”

“Frostpine won’t mind,” Daja assured her. “He said ‘be free’.”

“I didn’t want to miss it anyway,” said Sandry, starting to pick her way down the hill. 

“Lark won’t be batting yet,” said Daja, following her. “She’s a bowler.”

“She might be an all-rounder, though,” said Sandry, with moderate confidence in the term.

“They still bat in the middle of the order.”

“Well they might lose five wickets before we get there!” said Sandry with a grin. “Quick!”

They walked back towards the women’s oval. They’d missed three overs, according to the scoreboard, but no wicket had fallen yet. 

On their way back to Frostpine, they saw the next batswoman sitting on a chair near the boundary, wearing a big broad-brimmed hat and drinking from a bottle of water. She waved at Daja and Sandry as they walked around, and though Daja couldn’t remember ever seeing her before, of course Sandry immediately waved back and veered across to talk to her. She was a white woman maybe about Rosethorn’s age with a pointy chin and a face that was starting to wrinkle.

“You’ll be Daja and Sandry, then?” the woman said, and an odd feeling swept over Daja. It wasn’t a strong Irish accent, but it was strong enough to feel like home to Daja. It was odd how they kept popping up around the place, even out here.

“Yes! How did you know?” said Sandry, a bit dimly in Daja’s opinion. This was Lark’s teammate, and Daja wasn’t exactly an inconspicuous person around these parts. But that was Sandry for you.

“I’ve heard quite a lot about you,” the woman said. “My name’s Eileen, by the way.” She offered her hand, and first Sandry then Daja shook it.

“I saw the catch you took before,” said Daja. “That was really good.”

Eileen grinned. “The catch was the easy part, I’ll tell you now. The real achievement there was getting back up again.”

Daja smiled and Sandry laughed.

“I hear you’re a Dubliner, then?” said Eileen.

Daja nodded. “Until a year and an bit ago.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Northside,” said Daja. “Drumcondra.”

“Ah. My mother grew up in Clontarf.”

“But you didn’t live there?”

“No, in Roscam.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just 20 minutes or so outside Galway.”

“My dad grew up in Galway until he was fifteen,” said Daja. “In Rockbarton.”

“Ah, by the sea,” said Eileen. “Lovely. The aquarium’s around those parts, if I remember rightly.” Then she looked at Sandry and grimaced apologetically. “Listen to the two of us babbling away about the old country, forgetting all our manners. I’m terribly sorry, love.”

“I don’t mind,” Sandry said. “I like learning where people come from.”

Eileen glanced at the game then back at the girls. “Where are you from, yourself?”

Daja watched Sandry set herself for the recitation. It was funny, it wasn’t like Sandry _had_ to tell people the entire list of places she’d lived, but she seemed to think it was her duty or something to acknowledge every place she’d spent any decent amount of time in.

“I was born in Turkey, but when I was little I lived in Sydney, except we went back to Turkey a lot because a lot of my family was there, except now a lot of them have moved away. When I was six we lived in Switzerland and then the Ukraine, and then in India and Sri Lanka as well. We came back to Australia when I was nine but that was in Perth, and then we went back to Sydney but my parents had projects in Asia so we kind of spent a lot of time in different places still. I think I’m still Australian though, my mum was born here and when I’m here I always went to school, so –”

Eileen looked slightly stunned. “And how old are you now?”

“Twelve,” said Sandry. 

“I went with my family to Brittany one summer,” said Daja, just to contribute.

Eileen laughed. “And I’ve gone as far as Cornwall.”

Every school year, when they had to stand up in front of the class and say what they’d done over the summer, Luke Walsh gave the exact same speech about going to Cornwall, visiting his grandfather, going surfing, fishing and cycling along the tramways. Kernow, he always called it, and every time, he was corrected. “An Coirnéal,” said Daja softly, remembering. 

Eileen looked at her regretfully. “Níl, ah, Gaeilge agam,” she said. “Tá brón orm.”

Sandry looked between the two of them with bright eyes. “Is that Irish?”

“I don’t speak it at all,” Eileen said. “Just a word here and there.”

“That’s more than anyone else I’ve met here,” said Daja, trying not to sound sullen about it.

“You spoke Irish at home?” asked Eileen.

Daja nodded. “But English too.”

Eileen reached out and took her hand, squeezed it, and let go. “You must miss it,” she said. “It’s hard enough finding the Gaeilgeoir in Éire, let alone on the other side of the world”

“Gaeilgeoirí,” Daja corrected automatically. “Me and my brother went to a Gaelscoil, so all our friends spoke Irish. Some of them only spoke it at school, but they all could. It’s still so odd learning in English.”

Eileen sighed. “I would have liked –”

There was a big shout from the pitch and Eileen jumped a little in her seat. “That would be my cue,” she said, picking her helmet up off the ground. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” said Sandry.

“Good luck,” said Daja. 

Eileen gave them one last smile, put her helmet on and picked up her bat. Daja watched her walk out onto the field, giving a gloved fistbump on the way past her teammate who’d just gone out. “She should really have been watching the game,” Daja said.

“Oh, whoops,” said Sandry.

“It’s not our fault,” Daja said before Sandry could start working up any real guilt. “She’s the one who started talking to us.”

“That’s true,” said Sandry. “Do you want to sit somewhere and watch her bat?”

Daja did.

The two of them walked around the fence a while until they found a free spot where there were no advertising boards blocking the view.

 _Help_ , Briar demanded just as Daja settled down.

_With what?_

_Look._

Daja looked. He’d made some kind of knot in the piece of black twine he was learning on, but as she watched he pulled on it, and instead of holding, the knot slipped.

 _I swear I was doing it just like you showed me,_ he said.

_Show me how you did it._

He pulled the knot apart and laid the twine out on the rug in front of him. _You grab it, go around, through and up._

_Yep._

_Then around the outside, in the middle and down._

_Yep._

_Then pull._

_Yep._

_But look, it still moves. You said it wouldn’t move no matter what._

_Pull it more up and down, not from every direction. It’s too late now for this one, though, you’ve tightened it up wrong._

_How does it make a difference? I set it up perfectly._

_Just try it._

He pulled it apart and started again, working unreasonably quickly and smoothly for someone who’d only learned the knot the day before. _And then pull up and down?_

_Yeah. No, not – yeah, those ones._

Briar pulled, and the knot tightened up. He tested the noose and the two bits coming out of it, and nothing slid. _Sweet,_ he said. _Thanks._

Daja shifted back to her own eyes, blinking hard to get her bearings back. _You’re welcome._

_Where are you?_

_Around the other side from you, down near the boundary. Are you going to come over?_

_Nah once I’ve got this I’m going for a wander._

“Was that Briar?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Bowlines.”

There was a big shout from the middle, and half the fielders had their hands up in the air, but the umpire shook her head.

“I always miss when things actually happen,” said Sandry, sounding peeved. “I think it’s a conspiracy.”

“We saw Lark’s wickets, and her catch,” said Daja. “And we saw that six.”

“Because I was paying proper attention then,” Sandry explained.

Daja only just managed not to roll her eyes. “I wouldn’t call you getting distracted from the game a conspiracy against you.”

“Well, it is,” Sandry insisted. “The world is conspiring against me by being too interesting.”

“So fight back,” said Daja. “Pay attention to the game.”

Sandry clasped her hands in her lap, leaned forward slightly and did just that. “Don’t distract me,” she said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Briar tied the bowline six more times. The first time he stuffed up pulling it tight again, and he wanted to get it right five times in a row. This was another thing that would’ve been really bloody handy to know years ago, like when him and those two boys from Watergardens had to drop that bedhead down two storeys into Casey’s trailer or when Nasri’s cousin found the empty apartment they’d been holed up in and Roach, Tejas and Turtle had knocked him down but none of them knew how to tie him up properly. Now that Briar knew Daja, and Daja knew sailor shit like knots because of her ancestors who sailed the Irish Sea or whatever, he wasn’t going to waste another second.

He tucked the bit of rope in his pocket and looked up at the game. Sandry and Daja were gone, Frostpine was a little way off talking on his phone, and Tris was scowling over that printed out bit of paper she’d been scowling at for the last half an hour. With no one around to make it interesting, and Lark not even on the field, cricket really lived up to its rep as the most boring fucking sport on the planet.

Which reminded him, actually.

 _How do you know Rosethorn hates cricket?_ _I didn’t know that._

Tris didn’t look up from her reading, but she did scowl a little bit harder. _She doesn’t belong to you, you know. It’s not unthinkable that someone might know something about her you don’t._

 _I didn’t say it was unthinkable you could know that_. _I just said how do you know._

 _You said, “I didn’t know that,”_ said Tris. _And why would you?_

There was only one real reason for a person to answer a question with another question like that, Briar knew, and that was because they didn’t want to answer the first one. He wasn’t stupid, and he knew Tris. _Not gonna work,_ he said. _You’re not getting a fight._

Tris snorted. Her eyes had stopped moving over the words.

 _So spill,_ Briar said. _How do you know about Rosethorn?_

 _I don’t really want to discuss it with you,_ said Tris.

As a way of saying “piss off”, that was super fucking polite. Suspiciously polite, really. “How come?”

Tris turned to look at him. She didn’t look mad, and by now Briar was deadly curious, so he sat up straight and looked right back at her. 

“I don’t know how to explain this,” said Tris. She thought for a moment and then nodded slightly to herself. “She gets angry.”

Briar’s brain strained to connected the dots. “About cricket?”

“No. Well, that’s not what I mean.”

“She gets angry at loads of stuff,” said Briar. “So what? Life sucks, fair enough.”

“She gets angry a lot,” Tris said again, and then she swallowed and took a careful breath. “And she never hurts anyone because of it.”

The effort it was taking Tris to say this made Briar’s throat close up suddenly, and he had to look away. It wasn’t only Tris that had a scrunched up ball of something inside her that hurt if you tried to unwrap it. 

“I need to learn that,” Tris went on. “So I watch.”

Briar stared at the grass. It was dry and tired, just like he suddenly felt.

 _What’s wrong?_ said Tris.

Briar rubbed his eyes and shook his head to snap out of it. He breathed in and out, then he looked at Tris, who looked really actually worried about him. It looked funny on her.

“You know how fucking lucky we are?” Briar said. “How –”

“Yes,” said Tris.

And she did. Briar knew she did, and he could breathe again. “You know, if I was Sandry I’d be hugging you right now.”

Tris raised her eyebrows. “If you were Sandry, you’d be _checking_ if I would put up with a hug.”

“If I was Sandry, you probably would put up with it.”

“If you were Sandry, you wouldn’t be talking sideways around your feelings this much.”

“Maybe my feelings just are sideways. You ever think of that?”

Tris grinned, and Briar grinned back, and the next part of the conversation didn’t come in words. Tris looked over to the game, and Briar lay down and stuck his hat back up over his face. It was only after Frostpine came back after his phone call, settling down and saying he assumed neither of them could update him on how the game was going, that Tris went back to reading and Briar remembered he’d been going to have a look around.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Briar very quickly realised there was fuck-all for him to actually see, anywhere. If he stayed in the park, like he was supposed to, all he had was two games of cricket and a bunch of people watching cricket. He prowled around the spot in between the ovals for a while, scoping out the food and the clubhouse and all that, but the place was dead as dogshit. If anything, hanging around like this made his fingers itch, and when he started thinking dollar signs was when he really needed to find something else to do, and quick. Old habits cut deep.

He broke away from the middle spot and went over to walk around the other game, looking for some fresh air and a clear mind. Way over on the far side there was a huge old gum tree, so he set off in that direction for some quiet company. A couple of old ladies yelled at him to get out of the way when he walked in front of them, so he stopped in his tracks and yelled out “I beg your pardon” in his very best manners. They waved their arms furiously at him, so he waved back for a while and then continued on his way. 

When he got past most of the crowd and closer to the tree, he could see there were two people sitting up on one of the lower branches. It was a manna gum, with long curved, slightly drooping branches and its bark peeling off in long ribbons, so it was brown around the base of the trunk near the ground and smooth, shining white up top.

Once he was close enough to see, Briar stopped to scope the two of them out. They looked maybe around his age, a skinny Aboriginal girl with blond-tipped brown curly hair and and a smaller brown boy with short black hair, swinging his bright black and yellow runners in the air underneath him.

As he watched, the girl slid across a couple of metres to the tree trunk, got to her feet, cupped one hand to her mouth and shouted out towards the game, “Heyyyy, batter batter batter, heyyyyy batter batter batter!”

“That’s baseball, numbnuts,” said the boy in a a hoarse, scratchy voice.

This time she hollered at the absolute top of her lungs, “Heyyyy, batsman batsman batsman! Heyyyyy batsman batsman batsman!”

The boy was trying to say something, but he was laughing too hard to get any words out. 

The girl looked down at him, grinning widely. “Ain’t that right? No?”

Then she caught sight of Briar and the smile was gone quick as blinking. “What are _you_ looking at?”

The first thing that came to Briar’s head, other than _real fucking people, at last_ , was one of Daja’s lines. He looked up at the two of them and called back, “Melanin.”

Two pairs of brown eyes in brown faces stared down at him. Briar stared back.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” said the boy after a moment.

“You a brother?” the girl asked, sizing him up magpie-like. She was super, super skinny, hollow cheeks, bony legs and all. She just about had more hair curled up around her head than flesh on her bones.

“Nah,” said Briar. “Wouldn’t think so.”

“You’re new around here, but.”

“Yeah.”

He stared up at them. They stared down.

“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “You want a crick in your neck or you just can’t climb trees?”

“Move, then.”

She sat back down and scooted across to where she’d been sitting a couple of metres across. Briar took his run-up and scrambled up the trunk. There was one stump where a branch had been chopped off, but other than that he had nothing to help him. He just made it high enough to grab the branch, heaved himself up and twisted around to sit next to her.

“Could’ve just jumped up there,” the boy said, nodding sideways over to where the branch they were sitting on hovered about head-high above the ground. He had a faint accent Briar couldn’t put his finger on. Something German, or Dutch, or maybe South African.

“He doesn’t want to sit next to you, mate,” said the girl. “Tough.”

“I’m Ali,” the boy said to Briar. “This is Flick.”

“Hey,” said Briar. “Briar.”

“Oh, you’re that boy they talk about.”

“What boy?” said Flick. “Who talks about him?”

“In school,” said Ali. “Those three new girls I told you about.” He turned back to Briar. He had a little mousy face, with chubby cheeks and big, round eyes. “I thought you’d be like them.”

Briar quickly closed his mind to the others. “Yeah, not so much.”

“Why, what are they like?” said Flick.

Ali rolled his eyes. “They –”

“They’re my best mates,” Briar said, in fair warning, “and I’d die for ‘em.”

Ali closed his mouth again. “Oh.”

“How come you don’t go to Ali’s school too, then?” asked Flick. 

“I don’t go to any school,” said Briar.

“Oh, that’s sick as,” she said. “Wish I didn’t have to go.”

Everyone started shouting out on the oval, and Ali’s eyes snapped over in that direction. Someone had hit the ball way up in the air, and there were two boys running full pelt towards each other in the field to where it was gonna drop.

“Crash, crash, crash,” Flick started chanting.

“Shut up,” said Ali, elbowing her.

“Crash, crash, crash.”

They didn’t crash, in the end. One of them got closer, and the other one pulled out and watched him catch the ball.

“Rigged,” said Flick, kicking one foot outwards grumpily as everyone cheered. She saw Ali grinning and narrowed her eyes. “Is that one your boyfriend?”

Ali frowned. “No.”

“That is him though, right? Jaaaackson Hunter?”

“Yes, that’s him,” Ali said through gritted teeth.

Flick considered this, peering out to get a look at him. “He’s not even cute.”

“You don’t have to be cute when you’re a _genius_.”

“Doesn’t hurt, but.”

They kept on at each other like that for long enough that Briar lost interest and started taking a closer look at the tree. There was a little sprout growing out of the trunk right by his head, in a gap where the bark had all fallen away. These trees would start over just about anywhere, and Briar respected that. He reached out with his hand and his magic to give the little offshoot a bit of encouragement, and something sharp and hot escaped from his finger and zapped onto the blood-red stalk.

Briar stood there, numb, as the wave of horror hit him. The shoot wasn’t on fire, but it was singed, and it was Briar who’d done it. That had been fucking lightning. Honest to God fucking bushfire-starting hyper-electric lightning.

“Hey, Earth to Briar,” said Flick. “Come in Briar.”

Briar shoved his hands in his pockets in case they sparked any more and turned his head to look at her. “What?”

“Do you have ADD or something? Is that why you don’t go to school?”

It was gonna be the mother of all backflips, but the second Briar got back to the others he had to tell them he changed his mind. He couldn’t go around setting things on fucking fire. Not growing, living, green things. Not the land he fucking lived on.

He felt more than a bit like throwing up.

“Epilepsy?” said Flick.

“What?” said Briar.

“Do you not go to school because you have epilepsy? Are you having a seizure?”

“I don’t go to school ‘cause I have to catch up on six years of school I missed,” said Briar. “I don’t have epilepsy.”

“How the hell do you miss six years of school?” said Ali. “I get the shit kicked out of me if I wag more than one day.”

“Don’t be so nosy,” said Flick.

“Fuck off,” said Ali, and Flick stuck her tongue out at him.

“So Briar,” said Flick, conversationally. “How come you missed six years of school?”

“You mongrel,” said Ali, and kicked her hard in the leg. Flick leaned backwards towards Briar to give her more room to kick him back, so Briar turned around to sit with his back to the trunk, out of their way. After a few goes, Ali managed to kick one of Flick’s shoes off, and then it was no holds barred. Flick flipped upside-down on the branch with her legs hooked around, grabbed one of Ali’s swinging feet and started to try and lever his shoe right off his foot.

Briar scrambled down to the ground and grabbed Flick’s lost runner. It was pink and grey originally, looked like, but so faded and grimy it looked like Roach’s had used to.

This kid Briar, of course, got new shoes when he needed them.

He got jolted out of his reflection by another flying shoe, this one a black and yellow blur that hit him in the head and flopped onto the ground.

The time for thinking was over. Briar chucked Flick’s back up at the two of them in reflexive counterattack and bent down to pick up Ali’s too.

“Ha!” crowed Flick. “Ahahaha!” She’d caught her shoe by a stray shoelace and quickly flipped down to land on her feet on the ground. She shoved her shoe on, saw that Briar had Ali’s in his hands, and grinned. “Run!”

“No! Fuck!” Ali yelled, sliding along the branch so he could jump down alongside the trunk. “They’re my good shoes, Flick!”

Briar and Flick tore along the top of the slope, around to the spot between the two ovals where the food and everything was. Flick was fast, but Briar wasn’t too shabby himself, and they were neck and neck all the way around behind the food van and the toilet block.

“Any ideas?” said Flick, panting hard and with a gleam in her eyes that Briar knew well.

“How much you like him?”

“Love him like a brother,” she declared.

_What are you doing?_

_None of ya business,_ Briar said, and shut them out again. He hadn’t meant to let his block down anyhow.

“No, hang on, I know,” said Flick. “Gimme.”

Briar handed her the shoe.

“Be right back,” she said, with the devil’s grin, and she sauntered innocently back the way they’d come.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Niko had been right. After what felt like hours staring at this awful journal article, Tris was finally willing to admit she didn’t know enough maths to be able to properly study statistics. Every time she thought something was becoming clear for her, up would pop a sentence or a graph or even a single word that threw her back into imcomprehension. She hadn’t brought a dictionary, since she already knew the words in small dictionaries and anything bigger she didn’t want to take out of the house in case it got damaged or stolen.

So now she was stuck sitting here with a book she’d already finished, an article she couldn’t make head nor tail of and absolutely nothing else to do. There was the cricket match, obviously, but it was hardly enthralling entertainment. The sides had swapped over, and so Tris couldn’t even look for Lark in the field and watch her. And with their helmets on and all the padding, how could you even tell who was batting?

Frostpine was a little way around at the boundary fence chatting with a woman with a little toddler and not paying much attention to the game himself. Daja and Sandry were settled in across the other side somewhere, and Tris wasn’t planning on moving out from the shade of Frostpine’s huge umbrella. Briar was off who knew where, doing who knew what. He was shut off from her, so whatever it was he was doing, he didn’t want to share it anyway.

Other than people sitting around in chairs and on the grass, talking to each other and watching the cricket, nothing at all was happening. There were a couple of teenage boys in football jumpers up behind her on the hill, who’d come around between innings, stood at the fence for a while, then lost interest and started playing around with a football. They were what drew Tris’s eye, but if she watched them they would notice her, and that was the last thing she wanted to happen.

So if there was nothing else to do, then she might as well meditate, and see what the weather was going to do over the rest of the weekend. It was a bit of a windy day already and it looked like it would be again tomorrow, but Tris suspected that in the next day or so there were going to be showers, and Lark would no doubt want to have her cricket uniform washed and dried before Monday. If the showers were going to come before tomorrow afternoon, it would be worth letting her know she should get the washing done in the morning.

Tris folded up the article, slipped it into her book and put the book down carefully deep in the shade. She found that her forecasting meditation, as Sandry called it, worked best when she was in as open air as possible, so she picked her hat up off the rug and set it firmly on her head before shuffling out from under the umbrella and all the way to the edge of the rug.

She checked her posture, started her breathing pattern and started to venture out.

“Hey!” someone bellowed. Tris woke a little out of her meditation and saw a football tumbling a little way downhill from her, with that funny uneven bounce. She turned towards where the shout had come from and got bowled into by a stumbling, falling boy.

He fell into Tris with a very loud clunk and then he continued past, rolled a couple of times then lay sprawled on the grass. He was a pink and black and white blur, and at first Tris thought she must have a concussion, but then she realised her glasses were gone. She started patting around for them on the ground in front of her but couldn’t lay her hands on them.

_The fuck?_

_What was that? Are you all right?_

After crawling forward a little way, Tris’s hands found metal, and she set her glasses back on her nose, thankfully unbroken. She saw the boy who’d run into her lying face-up on the ground, eyes closed, his chest rising and fall with rapid, heavy breaths. He was wearing a blank and white striped football jumper with black scribbled autographs all over it. As Tris watched, he raised one hand and laid it tentatively on his temple.

Tris could feel Daja and Sandry staring at each other, and Briar was talking some absolute garbled rubbish to the people he was with about something flying into his face. 

Slowly, Tris started to feel her face throb and her head spin. “Ow,” she said, concentrating on willing her heartbeat to slow down again and for her whole body to stop quaking.

_Tris!_

_What?_

_What just happened?_

The other boy came jogging over from somewhere behind her, his face squinched up in concern. He was thickset and athletic-looking, and Tris was very glad that if she had to be run into by anybody, it had been the one made of only skin and bone. This bigger one would probably have killed her.

 _This is really bad_ , said Sandry.

“I dunno,” Briar was saying. “Maybe like a bottlecap?”

Tris shut them out. 

“Are you okay?” When Tris didn’t say anything, the boy crouched down in front of her. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Tris said, now that she was starting to feel herself again. Her cheek hurt, and she could feel a thin trickle of blood running down it, but it wasn’t like anything was broken. Nothing felt broken.

“I’m sorry about Ryan,” said the boy. “He’s a complete unco.”

“I’m not!” the skinny one insisted, sitting up, suddenly no longer in a world of pain. “There was a pothole or something. And you kicked it too hard, and it’s downhill here, you know.”

“Is your mum or dad here, or …”

“I’m fine,” Tris said again.

“You’re bleeding, though,” he said again. He looked around himself and his eyes fixed on his friend. “Ryan, take off your top.”

“No!” said the boy, jumping to his feet. 

“She’s bleeding, you dickhead!”

“Give her yours! Mine’s got Swanny and Jamie and Pendles on it!”

The bigger boy looked at his friend in disgust and looked down at his own jumper, which now Tris looked at it, didn’t look like any kind of football jumper she’d seen before. It was blue with a horizontal red stripe and white stripe, but there were funny shapes all over the design and a black silhouette of a man, pointing –

“Fine,” he said. “You go get some ice from the clubhouse, then.” He reached for the bottom hem of his jumper.

This was getting ridiculous. Tris went to wipe the blood away, and her hand came away a lot wetter than she thought it would. “I don’t want anyone’s shirt,” she said. “I’ll just find –“ she stood up to go down to Frostpine, but then she caught a glimpse of Daja and Sandry walking her way very quickly, and once she made herself open to it, she could feel how worried and upset they were.

Something was very wrong.

“Go away,” said Tris. “Forget it ever happened and stop bothering me.”

“But –”

“I’ll scream.”

A look of horror flashed over his face, and he grabbed his friend by the arm and pulled him away at top speed. 

Tris looked closely at Sandry and Daja as they approached. Sandry was holding a handkerchief to her cheek, and Daja was walking with her head down and from time to time rubbing her own.

A sick fear took hold of Tris. She wanted to wipe the blood off her hand, but the only alternatives were her clothes, Frostpine’s blanket or the grass, and none of them were remotely acceptable.

 _Who were they?_ Sandry asked. _Are you okay?_

 _Just an accident_ , Tris replied.

_Where’s Frostpine?_

_He’s right there._

As soon as she reached Tris, Sandry took the handkerchief off her cheek to show the little red cut she had right on her left cheekbone. It’s not bleeding any more,” said Sandry. “But it was! Look!” she held out her handkerchief, which was indeed dotted with blood.

Tris looked at Daja, but she had to look closely to be able to see the cut show up on Daja’s much darker cheek. “Exactly the same,” Daja said. “The exact same thing at the exact same time. Yours is worse, though.”

“I’m the one he actually ran into,” said Tris. “So that makes sense.”

“How does it make sense?” said Daja incredulously. “How in heaven’s name does this make sense?”

Sandry held out the handkerchief a little further towards Tris.

“No thanks,” said Tris. 

“You’ve got blood all over,” said Daja.

“I’ll go to the bathroom.”

“You should get some ice,” Sandry advised. “Where’s Briar?”

“He’s right there,” said Daja, pointing.

Briar came around from the direction of the toilets. His face was wet, but with water, not blood. “Hey,” he said. “What the hell.”

Sandry held her handkerchief out to Tris again. “Frostpine will be upset if he sees you all covered in blood,” she said. 

“And Lark,” said Daja. “The match is just about done, they’re eight wickets down.”

Tris took the handkerchief, trying to handle it only on clean parts. Sandry grabbed it back from her and folded it up so most of the bloody bits weren’t on the outside.

“Thank you,” said Tris, and set to wiping her cheek. It was sore, and she was going to have a pretty big bruise, she imagined.

“Hey, I asked a question,” said Briar. “I said what the hell.”

 _I’m getting Frostpine,_ said Daja. 

“‘What the hell’ is a rhetorical question,” said Tris.

“No it’s not,” said Briar. “It means ‘please fucking explain’. That’s a _request_.”

“I don’t think we can explain,” said Sandry, twisting her fingers around nervously. “I think maybe we need to tell.”

She and Tris both looked at Briar, waiting for an objection, but the boy just rubbed his cheek.

“Is that okay?” said Sandry.

“Fine.”

There was something fishy there.

“Okay, yeah, look,” said Briar, “I accidentally shot lightning at a tree just now.”

“You _what_?”

 _Later_ , Briar said, as Frostpine came back with Daja at his heels. Sandry turned sideways so he wouldn’t see her own pink cheek.

Frostpine looked at Tris and at the handkerchief in her hand. “Let me see.”

Tris dabbed at her cheek again and looked at the handkerchief. “It’s not bleeding much now.”

“You need some ice,” Frostpine said, and on cue, the bigger of the two boys came running back.

“From the pavilion,” he said. He held out a plastic clip seal bag full of chunks of ice. 

“Lachie Stewart,” said Frostpine. “Who’s surprised.”

“It wasn’t me, actually,” he said defiantly. “Ryan tripped over his own feet and fell right into her. With his head.”

“Which is, of course, why you’re looking so guilty.”

Lachie’s jaw jutted out and he looked a lot like Sandry, just a lot bigger and with brown eyes instead of blue. “Just because –”

“Thank you,” said Tris, grabbing the bag from him. “Bye.”

“Tris.” There was a bit of reproach in Frostpine’s voice, and Tris hated that that _did_ sting a little to hear from him.

“I said thank you,” she said. 

“Yeah and that’s a lot,” said Briar. “I’d take it and run if I was you, mate.”

Lachie looked a bit confused and more than a little disgruntled, but he just apologised again and left.

“Let’s go around to the pavilion and wait for Lark,” Frostpine suggested. Tris glanced at the scoreboard and was surprised to see it now said 10 wickets had been taken. She hadn’t noticed a thing.

Frostpine hoisted the esky, Daja picked up and collapsed the umbrella, Tris picked her book up off the picnic blanket and Briar and Sandry shook out the blanket and folded it up together. Tris put the bag of ice to her face and winced at the biting cold.

“Use the handkerchief,” said Sandry. “Your hand won’t get so cold.”

As they set off, Daja kept rubbing her own cheek, even though all the others’ injuries had faded to almost nothing by now. Only Sandry still had a bit of a pink cheek, and that just because other than Tris, she had the palest skin. 

“It was nice of him to bring the ice,” said Sandry as Tris tried to arrange the bag of ice inside the fairly small handkerchief without touching any of the blood. “Do you know him, Frostpine?”

“He’s a nephew or cousin or somesuch of someone I know from work,” said Frostpine. “His sister’s a mate of Kirel’s, I think she goes to his TAFE.”

Sandry made a noise of polite interest, but her thoughts had moved elsewhere. _What are we going to say?_ she said. _How are we going to tell them?_

 _Just say what’s been happening,_ said Daja. _Say our magics have been crossing over and then say what just happened now._

_But …_

_Don’t worry about trying to think of an excuse for keeping the secret_ , Tris advised her. _There aren’t any good ones._

“Say, Frostpine?” said Briar, to cover for the silence, but then he couldn’t think of anything to say after it.

“Yup?”

“Who won the game?”

“Lark’s team lost,” said Daja. _Are we going to tell about the circle as well?_

 _I think we should_ , Tris and Sandry said in one single thought.

 _May as well_ , said Briar. 

_It’s only getting worse_ , said Tris. _We tried, but to keep going now would be ridiculous._

 _Sunk cost fallacy,_ said Daja.

That was met with a collective, _What?_

 _My dad was always talking about fallacies_ , said Daja. _Sunk cost fallacy, anchoring, correlation doesn’t equal causation –_

_What the fuck is a fallacy?_

_What’s a sunk cost?_

“I just want to let you all know I don’t take this personally,” said Frostpine.

“Oh,” said Sandry. “Sorry. We were just talking about something a bit private.”

 _I think it means if something’s not working you shouldn’t keep trying to do it just because of how hard you’ve already tried_ , said Daja. 

“Oh, like I said, no offence taken,” said Frostpine. “You just might want to consider it reads as a pretty strange silence from the outside.”

“Does it?”

 _Throwing good money after bad_ , said Tris. _That’s what my aunt Uraelle called it._

 _If what you’re trying to say with all this blather is we should cut our losses, then yeah_ , said Briar. _Duh._

 _Didn’t you hear Frostpine saying this is rude?_ said Sandry sternly.

“He didn’t say it’s rude,” said Briar. “He just said it makes us look like fucking weirdos. Right?”

“Wrong,” said Tris.

“Sorry,” Daja said to Frostpine. “I think it is rude, really.”

 _We are so fucked_ , said Briar.

Tris couldn’t help but agree.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we are again :)

Sandry couldn’t eat. They’d decided to wait to explain everything until after dinner, when everything was cleaned up and everyone’s jobs were all done for the day, but waiting that long was easier said than done. Dinner smelled delicious, and it had been her own request to have lamb and couscous, but thinking of all the ways the evening’s conversation could go made Sandry’s stomach queasy and her mouth dry.

 _You’re not gonna feel any better from being hungry,_ said Briar. _Stupid not to eat._

 _It’s really good_ , said Daja. _Is this a family recipe?_

 _Lark made it_ , Tris pointed out. _So somehow I doubt it._

 _Uncle Vedris can cook four things_ , Sandry said, forcing down a couple of bites. _He had a lamb couscous recipe he said his aunt taught him. This isn’t the same one, but it’s not too different. He used more tomato in his._

 _What’s the other three?_ said Briar.

_What?_

_The other three things he can cook._

_Pilaf, menemen and roast chicken._

_What’s pilaf?_ asked Tris.

 _Rice,_ said Briar. 

_What about menemen?_

_Dunno._

_It’s a bit like an omelette, with tomato,_ said Sandry. _He had it for breakfast every single day before he got sick and the doctor said not to any more, but he still made it for me when I stayed with him last year._

“So,” said Rosethorn. “What is it that’s so deathly secret it can’t be discussed in the open air?”

Sandry choked on her couscous. Briar immediately stuffed his mouth full of food to save himself from having to answer. Daja looked at Tris, who was carrying on eating as if nothing at all had been said.

“We were just talking about Sandry’s uncle’s cooking,” Daja said. 

Rosethorn looked at her with narrowed eyes, but Daja was unfazed. It had been the truth, after all.

Sandry took two big gulps of water and wiped the tears out of her eyes. “This is very good,” she said to Lark. “Have you made it before?”

“Something like it,” Lark said. “Are you all right?” Her slightly concerned look was somehow harder for Sandry to bear than Rosethorn’s suspicious one.

“Oh, um,” said Sandry. “Yes?” She drank some more water.

 _You’re not going to get a better opening than this_ , said Tris. 

_Yeah, go for your life,_ said Briar, still chewing.

Sandry looked at Daja, who nodded. _It’ll be okay,_ her friend said, putting down her cutlery and sitting back in her chair.

 _Whether it will or it won’t_ , said Tris, _we have to do it._

Sandry cleared her throat. “There’s been –” she started, but her throat caught and the words only half came out.

“Pardon?” said Rosethorn.

“There’s been a problem with our magic.” Now Sandry had both women’s full attention, but her course was set and there was no turning back from it, so Sandry put it out of her mind. “It’s not just that we can talk to each other. I mean, that’s not a problem at all. You already know we can. But it’s not just that.”

“So what is it?” Rosethorn asked after a few moments of strained patience.

Sandry had thought of a few good ways to explain it over the last couple of hours, but now the moment had come, the words escaped her.

“My rose,” said Daja softly. “It lived for three weeks.”

Sandry jumped in quickly. “I turned the zip on my schoolbag into magnets by accident.”

“Your rose that you made with Frostpine?” Lark asked Daja, and the girl nodded.

“And I didn’t get burned by the oven tray when I touched it straight out of the oven,” added Sandry. “Like ten times.”

“I was always the only one who could hear voices on the wind,” said Tris. “Now they all have as well. And I can do that trick Sandry does to get her hair out of her hairbrush.”

Rosethorn looked at Briar. “And you?”

Briar chewed slowly, wrinkling his nose as he did. When he’d finally finished, he looked ruefully at his plate then back up again. “I shot a spark at a tree today.”

Rosethorn caught and held his gaze. “You did.”

“By accident,” Briar added quickly. “And it didn’t catch, so no harm done.”

“No harm done,” said Rosethorn. “I see.”

“Well, I mean, obviously it’s bad,” Briar said, a little desperately.

Lark leaned forward a little. At the other end of the table Rosethorn exhaled heavily, crossed her arms and sat back.

“So this has been happening at least since Daja’s rose,” Lark said, so seriously that Sandry knew she was cross. Or at least she was really unhappy, which Sandry thought might even be worse. “That’s quite some weeks ago.”

“We didn’t realise for a while,” said Daja. “I thought that was just part of my own magic, you know?”

“We did work it out, though,” said Sandry. “Before now.” And then, because the whole point of this was to be honest, she added, “Quite a while before now.”

Lark turned her sad brown eyes onto Sandry, and Sandry felt wretched. It just wasn’t fair that standing by her friends meant she’d had to keep secrets from Lark all this time. It wasn’t fair at all. She couldn’t win.

“And it took the boy here turning firestarter for you to think maybe you needed to mention this to us?” Rosethorn asked.

“No,” said Tris. “That wasn’t it.”

“Yes it was,” said Briar. “If that Collingwood c – ah, guy didn’t run into you, I was gonna say to you all anyway about it. I can’t go sparking. Tris knows how to control it, I don’t have a clue and I didn’t even do it on purpose in the first place, and hell if I’m risking anything happening with it, not after before.”

Lark and Rosethorn exchanged puzzled glances, which Sandry sympathised with. She knew exactly what Briar meant, and still she hadn’t quite followed what he’d said.

“If Ryan didn’t run into you?” Lark said to Tris. “How is that related to this?”

Sandry felt her cheek ache when Tris reached up and pressed lightly on her own. 

“We all felt it,” said Daja. “When it happened.”

“It wasn’t just feeling it, like ‘ow’ or whatever,” Briar chimed in. “We all fucking _bled_ from it.”

Sandry nodded. “Some of my blood is on that hanky too. It healed fast, and now you can’t tell at all, but me and Daja were together and we saw what happened.”

“They matched exactly,” said Daja, tracing where her cut had been. “Just like Tris’s.”

Lark didn’t look disappointed any more, and Rosethorn didn’t look angry. They looked surprised, very serious and more than a little bit worried.

 _They’re scared_ , said Briar. _Fuck me, they’re scared._

Lark leaned over and took Daja’s hand. “You were physically injured?”

“Yes.”

She looked further along the table to Sandry. “And you?”

Sandry nodded. Lark let go of Daja’s hand and turned to Briar, on her right. “And you?”

“And me.”

“And you all healed immediately afterwards,” said Rosethorn. “Except Tris.”

“We didn’t just imagine it, but,” Briar insisted. “I was with other people, and they saw it, and I had a hell of a time trying to explain suddenly bleeding out of nowhere, I tell you what.”

Something about that caught Rosethorn’s very specific attention. “What other people would these be?”

Briar shifted in his seat. “Just people.”

Sandry was pretty sure one of the kids Briar had been playing with was Ali Madlada, and she didn’t know what would be secret about that. Ali went to their school. The more friends Briar had there when he started going, the better.

“We can discuss ‘just people’ later,” said Rosethorn. “Are there any more revelations to come out about this?”

“I wrote down all the things that happened that I know,” said Daja. “If that would be useful.”

Tris frowned at her, and after a moment Sandry realised she was doing the same. Daja saw the looks they were giving her and shook her head. _Don’t get cranky,_ she said. _No one who saw it would understand it. Give me some credit._

“It would be useful, yes,” said Lark.

Daja nodded. “Wait here, I’ll go and get it.”

And here was the moment. “I’ll go and get, um, something too,” said Sandry. She followed Daja away from the table, and when Daja turned to go upstairs, Sandry kept on going down to her room, her steps short and reluctant.

 _It’s the right thing,_ Daja said to her. _You saw how serious this is._

Sandry gritted her teeth and went to get the circle.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

With Daja and Sandry gone, Briar set to finishing off his dinner before they came back and things got all conversation-y again. Not like he had anything particular to say, anyway. There’d be plenty more talking later on.

Sandry came back when he had two mouthfuls to go, and when Daja came back a couple of seconds later he was done. Once they were both sitting down again, Daja reached over and put her diary in the middle of the table. 

“Your school diary?” said Briar. “Really?”

“Like I said, no one would understand it.” She opened a page and pointed. “See, I just used colours for each of us, and little notes, and unless this town’s secretly crawling with Gaeilgeoirí, nobody will have the slightest clue what any of it means.”

Briar had to admit that was smart. _That’s some full-on spy shit,_ he said to Daja. _Didn’t think you had it in you._

“I can explain it all to you,” Daja said to Lark and Rosethorn. 

_And you kept it secret from all of us_ , said Tris. _That’s impressive._

 _You wouldn’t have liked it,_ Daja said. _And I didn’t want to argue._

“We made this,” Sandry said abruptly. She took her hand out of her pocket and dumped their circle on top of Daja’s diary. “When I spun us together, I had –”

“Your first thread,” Lark murmured. “With four lumps.”

Sandry nodded and arranged the circle so it was lying flat. “Me, Briar, Tris, Daja,” she said, pointing at each lump in turn. Something hummed in Briar when she pointed out his. “That’s how we’re all joined up. I spun us together, and we ended up with this at the end of it.”

“You didn’t think to mention this, say, when it happened?” Rosethorn asked, her voice dark and dangerous. “When you were explaining what you’d done?”

There was a short tense silence. Briar wished suddenly he hadn’t finished all his dinner quite so fast, since now he had nothing else to busy himself with.

“It’s not a simple thing,” said Daja. “It feels like … it feels like our souls, you know?”

“Like your souls.”

“It’s private shit,” said Briar, not liking Rosethorn’s tone. “And we didn’t know it was gonna do anything, so why would we have to say? It’s just a bit of string in a fricken circle.”

“We knew we had to say something about it now, even though it’s sensitive,” Sandry said. “But if we can not – I mean, it’s – it’s _us,”_ she finished helplessly. She was looking at Lark, practically begging.

“I’m concerned about it,” Lark said. “Until we know more about what’s been happening, I can’t make you any promises of any kind. By coming to us now, I trust you all have some understanding of how serious a situation this is.”

“How do we find out what it is, then?” Daja asked. “Does Niko have to look at it?”

“Of course not,” said Rosethorn sharply. 

“Oh.”

“Firstly, the four of you are ambient mages. Niko is not. Secondly, this situation was created by a thread mage spinning thread. I do know one of those myself, and thankfully, she is not Niko. Thirdly, Niko, with all his great insight and magical knowledge, didn’t know any more about this than anybody else, despite teaching you all to meditate together and supposedly closely observing your magic as he did so.”

“Right on,” said Briar.

The look Rosethorn gave him said in half a second that she’d noted every single thing he’d said that was out of line so far this conversation, and now wasn’t the time to get into it, but she sure as hell was going to be bringing it up with him later.

Terrific.

“You know two, though, my dear,” said Lark.

“Hm?” said Rosethorn, looking at her and away from Briar.

“You know two thread mages.”

“Oh, you think –”

Lark nodded. “I think so. I mean, look at this.” She waved her hand at their circle.

Rosethorn leaned forward with her elbows on the table and looked at it closely. “But –”

“It is now, yes. But it wouldn’t have been enough.”

“Mmm. But she – I mean, obviously.”

Lark just raised her hands in a kind of helpless gesture, and Rosethorn nodded slowly.

Daja and Tris looked to Briar and Sandry, who both shook their heads.

 _I guess that’s how annoying we are when we do it_ , said Daja.

 _They’re not doing what we do, though,_ said Tris.

 _Our way we don’t even need to say anything at all_ , said Briar. _Heaps better._

 _They did it the hard way, though, over time,_ said Daja. _My parents were the same._

 _Our way was pretty hard_ , said Sandry.

 _Well,_ said Daja, _yeah. But it was fast._

 _A shortcut’s a good cut_ , said Briar.

“If you’re quite finished,” said Rosethorn. 

“If _you_ are,” Sandry said mischievously.

Rosethorn offered the girl a shadow of a smile. So _Sandry_ was allowed to be cheeky, just Briar got scorched if he so much as opened his mouth. Big surprise.

“Thank you for coming to us with this,” said Lark, all proper like it was an announcement.

“Eventually,” Rosethorn added.

Lark nodded. “It would be much better if you had said something sooner, but this was clearly a very difficult thing for you to do.”

“What _are_ we going to do?” Sandry asked. “Can we do something? Can we fix it?”

“This is what we’re going to do,” said Rosethorn, getting to her feet. She pointed at Tris and Briar. “You two are going to clean up the kitchen and do the dishes.” She pointed at Daja. “You are going to write down explanations for the notes that you’ve made in your diary.” She pointed at Sandry and the circle. “You are going to go and have a conversation with Lark. I am going to make some phone calls. Well? Now.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:)

  


Sandry walked out of Lark’s workroom with four silk bobbins and a mission. She headed straight to Briar’s room, where the three of them were sitting on the floor around a cup and two dice and Briar was explaining that any double number counted as higher than any roll with two different numbers because they wouldn’t come up as much.

“What game is this?” Sandry said when she finally reached the doorway.

Briar picked up the dice and put them in his pocket. “Yeah, better question, what were you talking about for like ten hours in there in super fucking secret?”

Daja was sitting with her back to the bed, Briar with his back to the window and Tris in between them and the door. There wasn’t really any room for Sandry to sit, so she went in and sat up in the middle of the bed, crossing her feet under her and sitting up straight like in meditation. “It wasn’t a secret, I just had to properly concentrate.”

“There’s a plan, isn’t there,” said Tris, climbing to her feet and brushing down her skirt.

Sandry pulled the bobbins out of her pocket and held them out. “Yes.”

“Oh good, just what I always wanted,” said Daja. “String.”

“It’s silk,” corrected Sandry. 

Daja grinned and raised her hand, palm up. Sandry gave her one bobbin and handed another one to Tris when she came over.

“What’s it for?” said Briar, holding his hands up and inviting Sandry to throw him his. Instead, she gave that one to Daja as well, and Daja passed it over to Briar.

“It’s something to do with untangling our magic,” said Tris, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “Right?”

“Lark thinks I can do something called mapping,” said Sandry. “Once the thread is attuned to you and connected with your magic, I can weave it, and then the cloth I end up with will show how we’re getting tangled up. And then we can fix it.”

“Fix it how?” said Briar, rolling the bobbin around in his fingers. “You’re going to pull us all apart again?”

“No,” said Sandry instantly.

“No?” said Daja.

“It will depend how the mapping turns out,” Sandry had to admit. “I don’t know what will happen.”

“But it might mean we have to separate,” Tris prodded.

Sandry frowned. It was hard to be confident when all anyone else wanted to know was the answer to the question she was furiously avoiding thinking about.

“Which means yes,” said Tris.

“Good while it lasted, but,” said Briar.

“Look on the bright side,” said Daja. “Maybe it won’t work.”

“What do we do with these?” Tris asked, holding up her bobbin. “Is it the same as before?”

Sandry shook her head. “You don’t have to do anything, just keep them close. It’s not just silk, Lark did something with it so it’ll be sensitive to you. Put it under your pillow tonight and in your pocket all the rest of the time, and hopefully I’m going to be able to do the mapping after lunch tomorrow. Oh, and Lark said no school on Monday.”

Tris had been holding her bobbin up close to her glasses and peering at it, but hearing that, her hand dropped down to her lap and she frowned at Sandry. “Why?”

“She says we shouldn’t go unless we know it’s safe. And if we have to do a big magic thing tomorrow we’ll be so tired anyway.”

“At least we’ll get a long weekend out of this mess,” said Daja. “One good thing.”

“I don’t think it’ll be the fun kind,” said Tris darkly.

“Speaking of fun,” said Sandry, tucking her bobbin away. “What’s that game you were playing?”

“I think he just made it up on the spot,” said Daja. 

“I didn’t,” said Briar. “Maybe Dimma did though, he never said where it came from.”

That was a name Sandry hadn’t heard before. “Who’s Dimma?” 

“I don’t want to play it,” said Tris. “I’m tired.”

“Just a guy I worked with a bit,” said Briar. “I’m tired too anyway.”

“Probably an early night is best,” said Daja. “It seems like tomorrow might be tough.”

That was true, but Sandry was going to be spending half the day weaving, and after she’d finished that, who knew what was going to happen. She wanted to spend time with her friends while she could. 

“We’ll hang out in the morning,” said Briar. “We’ll play dice, maybe you can finally learn to lie worth a damn.”

“What?”

“It’s a bluffing game,” said Daja, standing up. “You say what you rolled and see if people believe you. Niko’s coming in the morning, anyway, isn’t he? For meditation.”

“Oh, like Cheat,” said Sandry. She was terrible at Cheat, no doubt she’d be terrible at this one too.

“Niko’s coming,” Tris confirmed. “But I doubt what he’ll want to talk about is meditation.”

“I guess we show it to him, too,” said Sandry glumly. She hadn’t even gotten around to thinking about Niko coming around. Rosethorn had said they didn’t need him to fix this, but if he was coming anyway, then he’d find out about it, and Sandry didn’t think he’d just do nothing and go away again.

“Yes,” said Daja.

“We should,” Tris agreed reluctantly.

“Yeah,” said Briar, still sitting by the window fiddling with his bobbin. “But what’s Cheat?”

“It’s just a card game where you bluff,” said Sandry. “And if you think someone’s lying, you say, ‘Cheat’.”

“If we’re showing the circle to Niko,” said Tris, “does that mean Lark didn’t take it away?”

Sandry shook her head. “I still have it.”

A little wave of relief passed through the room.

“Good,” said Tris, getting off the bed. “Good night. See you in the morning.”

“Yeah,” said Daja, heading towards the door herself. “I’m going to bed too.”

“Laters,” said Briar. 

Once Daja and Tris had left the room, he looked at Sandry. “You going?”

“I probably should,” she said. “I’m going to use a lot of magic tomorrow.”

“If you can’t sleep, come back if you want,” he offered. “I’m not gonna sleep for ages.”

“Okay, thanks.” Sandry wriggled to the edge of the bed and stood up. “But you should try and sleep too. We should all try and be at our best tomorrow.”

She felt him laughing at her.

“You’re one to talk,” she said.

“I do _not_ talk like Rosethorn,” Briar said firmly.

Sandry laughed, then, at the expression on his face. “You’re picking up her dirty looks pretty well though.”

Briar’s glare got stronger for a second, then he wiped his face blank, and then he just looked confused. Then he wrinkled his nose, acknowledging Sandry had gotten him. “Fuck off,” he said. “Good night.”

Sandry smiled and closed the door behind her.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The morning started like most mornings. Tris’s alarm beeped, she turned it off, in a little while it beeped again. A quick scan told her Briar was out in the garden, Daja was awake but still in her room and Sandry was deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

Tris envied her that. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly at all until the rain had settled in just before midnight, and even then she’d had a few short, disturbing dreams that had not only woken her but Briar as well, who still slept so lightly through most nights it was a wonder that he functioned at all during the daytime.

But Tris knew better than to waste time lying in bed feeling sorry for herself. She’d spent most of yesterday calm and in control of herself and her magic despite how horrible a day it had been, and she had no choice but to do the same again today. No choice at all.

She got out of bed, put on her slippers and went to sit by the window for a few minutes, in what Daja jokingly called her morning prayers. It wasn’t raining any more but the sky was still a dull grey, and there’d be more rain on the way by mid-morning, Tris was certain. So much for hanging any washing outside.

 _Good morning_ , said Daja.

It was odd. Daja usually kept herself to herself until she left her room of a morning, and Tris was the same. It was as close as they came to privacy in a home where there was really no such thing.

 _I was just wondering if you wanted to talk about it,_ said Daja.

_I wouldn’t say there’s anything to talk about._

That left Daja uncertain, but Tris was set in her decision. If Lark or Niko or anyone found out she was _non-binary_ , as Sandry insisted on calling it, then that would be something to deal with then. There was no guarantee that they would find out, and Tris wasn’t going to waste time on possibilities. She would put it away, and it would stay away unless someone started digging.

 _It’s just this might be the last chance to talk about it like this,_ said Daja. _If we end up separated, you know._

 _It’s a definite no,_ said Tris.

 _Okay,_ said Daja. _See you at breakfast._

 _Thank you_ , said Tris, and shut herself off as best she could. She wasn’t going to overflow, overshare or overcompensate today. She would just get through it, and things would be as they were, and that would be that. First Niko, then this mapping thing, then whatever came out of that. It wasn’t like Tris didn’t know how to put up with a bad day.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

By Daja’s reckoning, it was about six minutes from when Niko came in the back door to when he came thumping up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“I guess you heard the news,” said Briar, scooping up his pair of dice and slipping them into his pocket.

Niko stood there at the top of the stairs, breathing deeply and staring at the four of them sitting in their beanbag circle. He looked … frazzled.

“It’s going to be okay though,” Sandry said, seemingly aimed at everyone in the room. “We’ve got a plan.”

After a moment more of silence, Tris, who had her back to Niko, pushed her glasses up her nose and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s rude to stare.”

“I think you might appreciate that I’m a little lost for words,” Niko said eventually. He crossed the landing with a few long steps. Briar jumped to his feet straight away, and Sandry and Daja quickly followed suit. When Tris still didn’t move, Daja leaned over and offered her a hand.

“Did they tell you the plan?” Sandry asked Niko.

“I’ve heard about the mapping, yes.”

After a moment, Tris accepted Daja’s offer. The moment their hands touched, a tingle of energy shot up Daja’s arm. Her shoulder twitched, but she ignored it and pulled Tris to her feet.

Once Tris was up, and had moved to Daja’s side and slighly behind her, Sandry shifted over slightly, so that she could get between Tris and Niko quickly if need be. 

Niko watched it with a frown that slowly shifted from bemused to indignant. He clearly had the wrong idea of who was being protected from who, and Daja quite frankly couldn’t be bothered explaining it to him.

Apparently Briar could, though. “Insulation,” he said, from where he was standing a little to the side of the other three.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Insulation,” he said again, waving his hands randomly in the air. “They’re the rubber gumboots and you’re the foot.”

Niko absorbed that comment and then put it to one side. “I’d be very much obliged if I could get an explanation of what has been going on,” he said, sounding like just the worst kind of teacher. 

_I’d be very much obliged if he’d learn to ask a question like a normal person,_ Briar added. “ _Very much obliged” my arse._

“Didn’t you get one?” said Sandry, taking half a step forward. “I mean, if you know about the mapping?”

Niko grimaced. “I’ve been directed upstairs for the particulars,” he said.

Briar snorted.

“Yes?” said Niko.

“Nothing.”

Niko looked around at them all, his expression both deeply suspicious and deeply concerned. Daja tried to relax her shoulders and get rid of the anxious frown she knew she was wearing. _The world’s not going to end_ , she said, but it was hard to soothe anyone when each one of them was bearing the worries of all four.

 _Yeah, like what’s he going to do?_ said Briar. _If he tries anything we can blast him._

 _Not helpful_ , Daja pointed out.

_True, but._

_Not helpful_ , Tris said, sounding strained. 

“Okay,” said Sandry. “This is what’s been going on.” She took one step towards Niko and held the circle out to show him. 

Niko reached out, his gaze intense, but the second he touched the string he jerked his hand back with a jump and a curse.

Sandry’s fist clenched tight around the circle, and she drew it back right next to her heart. “What?” she said.

“What _is_ that?” Niko said, his hand shaking a little.

“I spun us all together,” Sandry said defensively. “Like I said.”

Niko stared at Sandry’s hand, then her face, then at all of the others. “I thought that was a figure of speech.”

“You were meant to think that,” said Tris, right by Daja’s ear and loud enough to make her jump.

Niko looked right past Sandry and Daja to stare sternly at Tris. Something started to feel off about the air in the room.

 _Settle_ , warned Briar.

Whatever feeling it was inside Tris, which Tris couldn’t name and Daja certainly couldn’t either, rose up even higher for a moment, and then slowly, painfully subsided. 

_Are you trying to pick a fight now?_ said Daja, baffled by the sudden hostility. _That’s not a good idea._

 _She’s poking the bear,_ said Briar. Then, to Tris, _Cut it out._

 _Aren’t you the one that wanted to blast him?_ Tris sneered.

 _I said we_ could _blast him,_ said Briar. _Like, if he_ _came at us with anything. Not just for kicks._

“Show that to me,” Niko ordered Sandry. “Now.”

Daja could have screamed. As if things weren’t going badly enough, without Niko putting his foot squarely in it as well. Now Sandry’s hackles were rising at being ordered around, Tris’s fear was being converted to anger in bulk and at lightning speed, Briar was _always_ up and about for a fight, and here was Daja standing dumbly in the middle of everything, feeling like the only adult in the room but with no idea what to do about any of it.

“It’s not yours,” Sandry declared firmly. “You don’t have any right to it.”

“That thing is more dangerous than you could possibly know,” said Niko, his voice rising.

“We know it’s dangerous,” said Briar. “That’s why you’re bloody well here.”

“You do _not_ know,” Niko retorted, looking thunderous. “You are children, and your relationship with your magic is barely more than instinctive. You do _not_ know what this is, or what it means, and you simply cannot keep it to yourselves any longer. It’s blatantly irresponsible.”

Daja wanted to tell Niko how utterly stupid he was being, but Sandry jumped in before she’d worked out the words. “I made it!” she said. “ _You_ don’t know what it is!”

“Stop this,” snapped Tris, her fists clenched painfully tight at her sides. Feeling them, Daja couldn’t help stretching out her own hands. “Stop it!”

Sandry and Niko looked at Tris, one with guilt and the other with irritation, and Briar turned a scornful gaze on Niko. “If Sandry’s just a kid, how come you’re nattering back at her just the same? Didn’t realise they made kids in extra extra large.”

Niko glared at him, and Briar glared right back. 

Niko turned to Sandry. “A moment ago, you were giving it to me,” he said, still frustrated but trying to sound reasonable now. It was a start.

“I changed my mind,” Sandry announced. Then she paused a moment. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

Daja stepped up to Sandry and laid her hand over her friend’s clenched fist. Maybe she didn’t know quite how to talk to Niko, but Sandry she knew. “We all decided,” she said. “Don’t let his bad manners stop you from doing the right thing. We all decided he could look at it.”

Niko looked sourly at Daja then, but Daja didn’t care. He could think what he liked. She took her hand off Sandry’s but stayed by her side.

“You can’t have it,” Sandry repeated, lowering her hand. “Not for good. But you can see it if you promise not to hurt it.”

“I need to see it, Sandry.”

“I mean it!”

“So do I.”

“Do you promise?”

 _For fuck’s sake_ , said Briar.

Tris moved up on Sandry’s other side and held out her hand. There were still marks where her nails had been digging into her palm. _If you can’t do it, give it to me. I will._

Sandry moved her hand towards Tris then shook her head and drew it back. _It’s my responsibility._

 _Then go on_ , said Daja.

Sandry squared her shoulders and held her hand out, palm up, the circle in coils on top. Niko reached into his trouser pocket, took out a crumpled white handkerchief and picked up the circle with it.

Tension spiked in the four of them, and then it was done.

Sandry spoke into the quiet. “I had a piece of string I spun with four lumps in it. I used it as the leader to spin us all together, and now it’s this.”

Niko didn’t look like he was listening. He had his hand open now with the handkerchief sitting on top. He was staring at the circle hard, and his eyes were slipping in and out of focus so much it made Daja’s own vision go blurry in sympathy.

“I’m going to need it back for the mapping very soon,” said Sandry, which Daja very strongly suspected was not true. “So you can’t keep it or do anything to it.”

“I’m flattered that you think I _could_ do anything to it,” Niko said, sounding more settled now, but still a little peeved. He tucked the circle into his shirt pocket, still wrapped in the handkerchief.

“What is it?” Tris asked. 

Niko fixed her with a cool black stare. “That is not a question I can immediately answer.”

“Why can’t you touch it?” Briar chimed in.

“Can you tell what it does? Is it the reason our magic’s crossing over?” asked Sandry.

Niko blinked and looked around at them all like he’d never seen them before in his life. 

“Is it?” Briar prodded.

The frown slowly vanished from Niko’s face and his shoulders sagged. Even his moustache suddenly looked droopier than usual. “I’m sorry for losing my temper,” he said. “I would never have thought children –” he looked around at them again and shook his head slowly. “You are children.”

“Yeah, you’ve been saying that,” said Briar. “We know.”

“I may not have approached this in the most appropriate –”

Daja looked him in the eye. “We know.”

Niko sighed. “Yes.”

“Everyone’s upset about it,” Sandry said pointedly, and Niko looked past the two of them to where Tris was standing, refusing to look back at him.

“Is that all you wanted?” Daja asked Niko, not bothering to dress the question up nicely. He had what he came for, and he’d been a real donkey about it, and now he could leave them alone for a while.

“I was hoping for a conversation,” he said. “So in that respect, no.”

“I have some reading to do,” Tris said, and since Niko was standing between her and her bedroom, she turned and walked straight into Daja’s room and closed the door behind her.

 _I hope he’s proud of himself,_ said Briar.

“You shouldn’t have yelled,” Sandry said reproachfully. “She doesn’t like it.”

“Luckily, all the rest of us love being yelled at,” Daja said. She was starting to get a real headache.

“My reaction was intemperate,” said Niko. “I don’t need to be convinced of this.”

“Oh,” said Sandry. “Okay.”

 _It means over the top,_ said Tris. _Uncontrolled._

“I will speak with you all later,” Niko said. 

“Sick,” said Briar. “I’ll put it in my calendar.”

“We didn’t behave the best either,” said Sandry, with a small frown at Briar. “I think everyone’s just a bit worried.”

“Nevertheless,” said Niko, “I am the adult, as has been rightly pointed out to me.” He nodded goodbye and went down the stairs, far more slowly than he’d come up them.

“Academics,” Briar said wisely, once Niko out of earshot. “High-strung.”

“Oh, is that something Rosethorn says?” Sandry said, mostly holding back a smile.

“Oh, shut up,” said Briar. “He is, anyway.”

“So are you,” Daja pointed out. “Maybe it’s men.”

“Maybe your face is men,” said Briar. “I’m going outside for a bit.”

“I’m going to talk to Tris,” said Sandry. 

They looked at Daja. “I’m going to sit down for a while,” she said.

“Get some tea off Rosethorn for your headache,” Briar advised, and then he was gone.

Sandry smiled distractedly at Daja and then went to join Tris in her room, also closing the door behind her. Daja vaguely considered going and sitting in Tris’s room for a while, just to make a point, but the beanbags were right here and so she sank down into one, closing her eyes and emptying her mind to give herself a moment’s peace.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Tris was standing at the left-hand window of Daja’s room, in between the bed and the little table with the incense sticks and the cross with the circle in it and all the photos of Daja’s family. 

She looked different somehow in this room, surrounded by all of Daja’s things. Sandry didn’t usually think about how short Tris was, or how fat, or how bright red and curly her hair was. That was just Tris. But here, where Sandry’s eyes expected to see Daja, barefoot and strong and easy, it was hard to see Tris standing there and not compare the two.

She wondered how much the differences between them mattered to Tris.

“Stop thinking about me,” Tris said, sounding tired but calm.

“I can’t help it,” said Sandry. “There’s a lot to think about.”

The only reaction Tris had to that was a faded kind of annoyance, then she finally turned away from the window.

“He feels bad about it,” Sandry said. “He won’t be like that again.”

Tris scowled. “We’ll see if he will or he won’t.”

Sandry went and sat on Daja’s bed, hoping Tris would come and sit next to her, but Tris just watched Sandry closely through her glasses and stayed where she was.

“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” Sandry said. “I really wanted it to be just ours, for no one else.”

“We all agreed on it,” said Tris gruffly. “You don’t have to apologise especially to me.”

“I know, but –”

“It’s not like he’s never been in my head before. I do magic, you know, and he’s there. He knows that I – well, he knows what magic’s like for me. You and Briar and Daja, he’s got no business at allin yours.”

“He might not be able to use it like we do,” Sandry said with all the confidence she could muster. “Maybe he can’t get into it. Maybe we’re the only ones who can.”

“He wouldn’t even touch it,” said Tris. “So maybe.” She glanced to the side for a moment before looking back at Sandry. “Lark might be able to, with you.”

Sandry opened her mouth to deny that, or to promise that she wouldn’t let it happen, or something, but she got stuck. Wouldn’t she have to, if that was what it took?

Tris smiled an empty kind of smile at her and said. “Don’t worry, I’m a big – well, I’ll manage. Like I said, we all agreed, and you have to do what you have to do.”

Sandry knew Tris didn’t blame her for what was happening, but even if it wasn’t Sandry’s fault, exactly, it still had been her doing. She was the one who had made the circle, and she was the one who had given it up. Tris was worried sick about it, like they all were. “I know I don’t have to apologise especially to you, but I am sorry. This is awful.”

Tris looked at her for a long moment then nodded. “Apology accepted.” 

Sandry leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Everything’s going to work out,” she announced. “I’ll straighten everything out, and then once there’s no more danger any more, that’ll be the end of it.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Tris. “For a second, I was worried.”

Sandry sat there, her mind nice and empty, just staring upwards. There was going to be a lot of work to do very soon, but not just yet. Tris was okay, Sandry was okay, everyone was okay. They were getting through it.

“If you get to apologise, then I get to thank you,” Tris said into the silence. “I never did, I don’t think. You saved our lives.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Sandry. “You don’t have to especially thank me.” She held in her laughter for a good five seconds, but as soon as she looked back across at Tris she had to let it out. 

“Oh, I see,” said Tris. “You’re funny now.”

“Yep,” Sandry said, giggling.

“I’ll make a note of it.”

“I think it’s stress, actually,” said Sandry once she thought about the different moods she’d been switching between all morning. “I think I’m very stressed.”

Tris sighed. “Yes.”

“Oh well,” said Sandry, pushing herself forward and onto her feet.

“Oh well,” Tris echoed, shaking her head as she followed Sandry to the door. “I don’t know how you do that.”

“Do what?”

Since Sandry had stopped and turned around, Tris reached past her to open the door. “Just say, ‘Oh well,’” she replied.

Sandry shrugged. “When I think too much about bad things I just feel worse,” she explained. “So I mostly try and think about other stuff.”

“I know,” said Tris. “That’s exactly what I mean.” She walked out of the room and Sandry followed her. Daja was still in their spot, lying down across two beanbags with her eyes closed and her hands clasped on her stomach. 

“Sorry,” said Tris. “He was in my way.”

“I know,” said Daja, opening her eyes. “I don’t mind. Briar was up here before, he said lunch will be early today so Sandry can get started afterwards.”

Sandry swallowed, trying not to make it a gulp. There was no _point_ in being scared.

“You’ll do fine,” said Tris.

Daja clambered up out of the beanbags, stretched and yawned. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The loom was ready. The warp threads were set up and imbued with Lark’s magic and a little of Sandry’s own, ready for the part they would play in the magic. Sandry sat on a cushion on the high wooden chair, and she tried to keep her mind clear. The weaving part, at least, would be easy. Sandry had been doing plain weave for ages, nearly three months, and this cloth wasn’t even going to be used for anything afterwards. It just had to be even and consistent, and that would be enough. Sandry could do that.

Lark was sitting on a stool right next to Sandry, and then Daja, Briar and Tris were standing all along the other side of the table. There were only two chairs on each side, and no one wanted to go and sit alone on the other side. Someone would have to soon, but not just yet.

“I trust nobody has lost their silk?” Lark asked. 

“Nah,” said Briar. He pulled his out of his pocket and held it up. “It’s a bit muddy, but.”

“All the better,” said Lark.

“All the better?” said Tris.

“Yeah,” said Briar. “‘Cause the essence of me is just filth.”

“Because that means it’s been with you while you’ve been working,” Lark corrected gently.

Briar had been mostly joking, but whatever. At least he wasn’t in trouble that he got it dirty.

“Mine is a bit as well,” said Tris. “It got rained on.”

 _All the better,_ said Briar in a passable imitation of Lark.

“Mine’s clean,” said Daja, holding it out. “Is that okay?”

“Fine,” said Lark. “Now, before I take these, I need to make it very clear to you that it will be _all_ of your magic.” She looked very, very seriously at each one of them in turn, and laid a soft hand on Sandry’s shoulder as well. “If any is left with you, the picture won’t be complete and no solution could be complete either. So you will have no magic _at all_ while Sandry is mapping, and possibly until the whole venture is finished.”

Tris took a half step back, then caught herself. She’d known this already. It would be ridiculous to make a fuss over it now.

 _We did it before,_ said Daja.

 _We didn’t_ , Tris snapped. _Before, we shared. Now, we’re giving it up. It’s just a little bit different, don’t you think?_

“I’d rather no magic than magic that starts fires,” said Briar, far more boldly than he felt. He held out his bobbin to Lark, who nodded her acknowledgement. 

_We trusted Sandry before,_ said Daja, and passed hers over as well. 

Tris, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same.

“I’m sorry,” said Sandry. “I’ll do this as fast as I can.” At a look from Lark, she quickly added, “As fast as I can do it _properly_ and _safely._ ”

Lark handed the three bobbins to Sandry, who picked up hers from the table, twisted the four threads together and started to wind them onto a shuttle. As she did that, Lark took out four new bobbins and handed one each to Tris, Daja and Briar, setting Sandry’s down in front of her where her previous one had been.

“Do the same with these,” she said. “Carry them with you. Once your situation has been mapped, we’ll use these to set it to rights.”

 _It’s okay,_ Daja said to Sandry as she tucked her new bobbin into her pocket. _We have to do this. None of us like it, but we have to do it._

Sandry kept on winding the threads onto the shuttle, her chin firm. _I know we do,_ she said. _I just wish I didn’t have to take everyone’s magic away._

 _Just make sure you give it back, is all_ , said Briar. _No worries._ He crossed his fingers on both hands and pulled them into fists, for luck. 

Lark went to the door, then the window, laying a piece of red string across each threshold and then bowing her head over them for a moment. When she’d finished, she looked up to see she was being closely watched. “It’s to confine the magic to this room, and to keep other magic out,” she explained. “It’s always best to work this kind of magic in as controlled an environment as possible.”

Sandry wound and wound and wound, not once looking away from her work.

“Each of you take a seat,” said Lark. “You need to pass a thread of your magic to Sandry as you meditate, and she’ll add it into her weaving. When it’s all passed along to her, then your part of this will be over. You can stay if you have free time and would like to, but I’m sure you all have things you ought to be doing.”

Daja was at the far end of the table, so practically speaking she knew she should be the one to go and sit on the other side, but her feet felt like lead. “How do we tell when that is?” she asked.

“You’ll feel it,” said Lark, sitting back down on her stool. “Like when you’re pulling on a rope and it runs out of slack. A jolt, or a tug.”

“Will it hurt?” said Tris. “It sounds like it would hurt.”

Lark shook her head. “It shouldn’t.”

 _Shouldn’t or won’t?_ said Briar, but he sat himself down in the chair nearest him. Tris did the same, and Daja plodded around to sit on the other side, opposite from Tris.

As soon as Sandry had finished winding the four strands of silk onto the shuttle, she passed it to Lark to hold while she settled into her meditation. The four of them fell into sync as quick as blinking, taking long, slow breaths together and letting them out in unison.

After a few minutes, Sandry pulled out a fine thread of her magic and waited for the others to add theirs. Daja’s came in the form of hot wire, drawn thin so as to match Sandry’s own. Briar’s crept out more tentatively, a tendril unsure of its direction until it found the others to grab onto. Tris’s magic came last, a sharp flash of power that leapt out to join its kind and then stayed put, showing itself to be far more than simple lightning.

Just as Sandry had twisted together the four silken threads, now she twirled their four threads of magic together until they melted into one single strand, which she then started to wind onto the shuttle that Lark returned to her.

It was an awful feeling, having your magic pulled out from inside of you. It reminded Tris somehow of the dentist, constant uncomfortable pressure on sensitive teeth, not being able to swallow or move her head away. For Daja it brought back memories of falling, of feeling the world slip away around her so that it felt like she was the only thing staying still. Briar withstood it with gritted teeth through his meditation. He had never felt anything like it before in his life, and he never wanted to again.

Sandry pulled and pulled and pulled, only the sheer monotony of the action making it possible to keep doing this to herself and to the others where everything inside her was screaming that she should stop.

And then they felt the jolt, and there was nothing left. 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~


	6. Chapter 6

  


Sandry wove. The others were gone, out of the room and out of Sandry’s awareness, but they’d left part of themselves with her and Sandry knew she wasn’t alone. Lark was still there, sitting at the other end of the table with some paperwork and her computer, but Sandry’s mind was filled with herself and her friends and the process. Her shuttle, singing with power, slid under and over and under and over and under and over and under, she fixed each row, she sent the shuttle through the other way again. Everything came together and everything had its place. 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

“Wait,” said Tris. “Wait. Wait.”

Little Bear stayed crouched on the floor wiggling his bum, all pent-up energy and frustration.

“Wait,” Tris said again. “Wait.”

He glanced at Tris and woofed softly, then his eyes zeroed back in on the biscuit on the floor. “Good boy,” she said. “Wait.”

“Hey,” said Daja, coming up the stairs. “Do you –”

Little Bear lunged forward and gobbled up the biscuit, then spun 180 degrees and charged across to greet Daja before Tris could so much as speak. 

So much for that.

Little Bear danced around Daja’s legs so fast she could barely catch him to give him a pat. Daja smiled and knelt down, possibly to give herself a lower centre of gravity so the rapidly growing puppy wouldn’t knock her down the stairs.

“Do you know what day we have to do that speech?” she asked, scratching Little Bear around his throat. “I thought it was this Thursday but on the sheet it says the 16th, which is Monday.”

“It’s Thursday,” said Tris. “I was trying to teach him wait.”

“What?”

“Little Bear. I was training him.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise.” Daja stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Can I help?”

“The biggest _help_ would have been not interrupting,” said Tris, watching Little Bear set off running around the landing, very nearly crashing into the television on his way.

Daja just looked at her, an expression of insultingly mild scorn on her face.

“It’s hard enough to get him to concentrate as it is,” Tris added.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I needed your permission to come up here, where I live,” Daja said pointedly. “You usually train him downstairs anyway, I didn’t know.”

“If he only ever gets trained downstairs, he’ll only ever behave downstairs,” Tris informed her. “You have to do it everywhere.”

“And if he only ever gets trained by you, he’ll only obey you,” Daja retorted. “Show me what to do.”

“I wish you’d tell Briar that,” said Tris, as Daja came over to Tris and sat down beside her. Little Bear came careening over to them, coming to a skidding halt when Tris raised her hand and ordered him to sit.

“I have,” Daja said. “We all have. He doesn’t listen.” She dropped her hand to the floor in front of Little Bear’s face and after a moment’s hesitation he flopped onto his belly. “Do you have more treats?”

Tris handed her a biscuit, and Daja gave it to Little Bear, who crunched it up in a second and then launched himself forwards at her.

“Stop,” said Daja, putting both hands up to block access to her face and almost laughing. “Sit down, you monster.”

Little Bear shook his whole body in some kind of bizarre dog dance and then took off around the room again.

“Where is he now?” said Tris.

“He just went outside with Rosethorn.”

Tris scowled. Just what she needed, a reminder that if she reached out to see what the weather was doing, she’d be rewarded with a whole lot of nothing and feel like, as Briar put it, _blasting_ something.

This whole disaster had confirmed one thing, at least. It wasn’t the magic inside her that made Tris so angry at everything all the time. No, that all came directly from her. The magic was just how it came _out._

“We should visit Frostpine,” said Daja.

Tris was lost as to where that comment had come from. Why would Daja want to go and see Frostpine when she didn’t have any magic? Wouldn’t that just make her feel worse? Daja was half-smiling, and Tris knew she was missing the joke.

After a moment the smile faded from Daja’s face. This time, Tris fancied she knew what it was about, and she fully agreed. It was getting more than wearisome to always have to explain everything to each other.

“Visit his shed,” Daja elaborated. “Kirel’s punching bag.”

“I don’t need a punching bag,” Tris grumbled. Even if she _did_ want to deal with her anger that way, she’d probably break her hand if she tried.

“I could do with one,” Daja admitted grimly. “Come on, show me what to do with Little Bear.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Briar had thought maybe not having any magic meant he wouldn’t be doing his usual work with Rosethorn, but she came around to his room at about half past one, already wearing her hat and with a pair of gloves in her hand. 

“Having a holiday?” 

“No,” said Briar. “But I can’t –”

“Rubbish,” said Rosethorn. “You don’t need magic to work in a garden. Unless Sandry pulled your brain out along with your magic?”

“Feels like she did,” Briar complained, pulling his practice sheet bends apart one by one. He could just about tie them with his eyes closed now, but sometimes he still mixed up the ends.

“You’ll have to rely on muscle memory, then,” Rosethorn said briskly. “Hurry up.”

Briar slowed up as they passed by Lark’s workroom, straining with a sense he didn’t have any more to try and get a feel what was happening in there, but there was nothing.

He didn’t realise he’d completely stopped just by the door until he heard Rosethorn’s voice in the kitchen, offering that whoever it was in there could come and work with them in the garden if they wanted, which was a hell of an offer, coming from her. Daja might take it up if it was her in there, but Briar knew Tris would rather chug petrol than do any kind of outdoor shit.

Right now, Briar would probably rather chug petrol too than go out there all hollow and blocked off inside, but Rosethorn had said to, and besides, self-pity was for chumps, so he hurried on ahead out of the corridor. Daja was sitting in one of the armchairs in the main room, writing in an exercise book. Rosethorn was around by the back door, waiting.

Briar went and put his shoes on, his hat, grabbed gloves and secateurs and his little forked trowel. Maybe he couldn’t talk to Daja as he worked like usual, but he could always talk to her later. Rosethorn was more of a “right now or else” kind of person. 

She looked at him kind of consideringly, too, when he finally made it out the back, but Briar didn’t know what she was considering. Maybe if he’d even be any good at this without magic, maybe if she should be nicer to him than usual with all this shit going on, maybe if she’d have a go at him now or later about the whole keeping secrets and fraternising with criminals deal. Briar didn’t know a single thing any more about what anyone was thinking, so screw it, why bother even wondering.

They went out to the natives first, for a round of pruning and to test Briar on the names of all the different kinds of leaves, which they’d been on for the last few weeks. He remembered it all fine, and mostly he was thinking how he’d rather tougher questions so he wouldn’t have any space in his brain left to think about how everything he touched was dead under his fingers.

It was the same thing going and weeding through the vegies. The beans didn’t recognise him, the capsicum didn’t give a shit. He might as well just be throwing empty dirt around for all he felt when he pulled out a weed. It was utterly utterly fucked.

It shouldn’t really upset him – it wasn’t like they _were_ dead, he just couldn’t feel them – but it did. Sandry was supposed to be finished with his magic soon, maybe even by the end of the day, and give it back to him, but what if the mapping didn’t work? What if it did work and they found out the problem, but whatever the problem was took even longer to solve? What if it couldn’t be solved, and it was either get the fucked up lightning magic back or never get it back at all? Live like this?

“Stop,” Rosethorn said, when he tugged a patch of clover so sharply that he snapped it, leaving all the roots still in the ground. “You know better than this.”

Briar sighed and started digging around in the ground to find the rest of the root. Rosethorn grabbed his hand and returned it to him firmly. “I said stop,” she said. “Relax.”

Never in Briar’s entire life had he been able to relax on account of someone telling him to. Not even Rosethorn had that kind of power. How long until Sandry was going to be finished? If he could just _ask_ her –

Rosethorn took his chin in her hand and looked in his eyes. He let her, expecting to feel her magic brushing against his, that comforting green –

“I’d like to see you try it,” he burst out, jerking away and scrambling up, stepping on some cucumber leaves just a bit by accident. “Come out here where you know everyone and they know you and maybe you even planted them yourself and now they’re absolutely dead to you, another _fucking_ graveyard and you can’t talk to anyone or feel anything and there’s fuck all you can do about any of it! You try it and then you tell me to relax!”

“Come here,” said Rosethorn. She was standing too, by now, one hand on her hip and the other beckoning him over. Did he even have to do what she said if he had no magic and she couldn’t teach him anything? Briar didn’t see why he should.

Rosethorn huffed out a breath and dropped her arm back by her side. She opened her mouth to speak, frowned, then closed it again.

“If you want to go back inside, you can,” she said after a moment.

“I don’t _want_ to,” Briar said. “I just –”

Rosethorn nodded, and so Briar didn’t bother saying the rest. Then she just looked at him again, but he was no wiser to what she was thinking now than he had been before. “Wash your hands when you go in. Fingernails included.”

“Yeah,” said Briar. 

“I’ll see you in a little while, then.” Rosethorn knelt back down in amongst the spinach. 

_Fuck you_ , Briar took the chance to say, when absolutely nothing and nobody would be able to hear him. _See if I don’t have better things to do with my time than pamper a bunch of high-maintenance namby-pamby excuses for plants that don’t even know how to grow in this fucking country in the first place. Catch_ me _so helpless and still thinking I’m God’s gift. Fuck you all._

“Something else?” Rosethorn asked, looking up.

“Ah, no.” Briar quickly hopped out of the raised bed. “Nope.” 

“Find the girls when you go in. Find something to do. Don’t mope.”

He hopped over the wall, went around to the tap, washed his hands, _including fingernails_ , rubbed a few bits of dirt off his legs and put the whole plants, gardens, Rosethorn, magic thing totally out of his mind.

Inside, there was Tris in the kitchen, getting a drink of water and looking like she pretty much wanted to shatter the glass with her brain. Little Bear was lurking around the kitchen table, sniffing at the table legs and the floor and, soon enough, at Briar’s feet.

“You look like I feel,” said Tris.

“This is horseshit,” Briar informed her. “Absolute horseshit. Where’s Daja?”

“On the computer.”

“Doing what?”

“How should I know? I’m going to go and read. At least I can still do that.”

“You feel like someone’s scooped out your insides as well, and stuffed you all full of clay?”

It was hard to read Tris’s expression. “Like a balloon,” she said eventually. “Slowly going flat.”

Briar felt a bit better at that. At least they were all in this shithole together. “Can I go and see Sandry? Are we allowed?”

Tris nodded. “I did just before. It’s working, but it’ll take a while longer. It’s not that interesting to watch.”

Briar didn’t care if it was _interesting_. He just wanted to see it. He wanted to see his magic and he wanted to see Sandry. 

“I’ll be upstairs if you want to look at any of your homework,” said Tris. “Mine’s finished, so I have time.”

“Okay,” said Briar. “Thanks.”

They went down the corridor together until Briar ducked into Lark’s workroom, leaving Tris to go up the stairs on her own. 

Sandry was sitting at the loom, doing the same weaving stuff she was always doing. She didn’t notice Briar come in at all, but Lark did from the other side of the table, where she was doing something on the little laptop. She smiled at him and motioned for him to shut the door behind him.

Briar quietly moved in next to Sandry to look at the cloth she was weaving. She’d done maybe ten centimetres of it, and even though all the thread she was putting into it was white, the cloth that was coming out of it sure wasn’t.

He could see the four of them there, plain as day. Briar was the left-hand edge, where the cloth glowed a faint, soft green. All the way on the other side was Daja in warm red and orange. Sandry was next to Briar, a strip of pale yellow, and between Sandry and Daja was Tris in cool, shining blue.

Except it wasn’t all just straight lines. Only a little way up from the bottom of the cloth, where Sandry had started, the colours started to wash into each other, just a tiny bit at first but then more and more as Sandry kept going. Briar looked at the smattering of blue in his own stripe, and his hand twitched at the memory of the lightning that had come out of it.

“Is everything all right?” Lark asked him quietly. 

“Yeah,” said Briar. “I maybe yelled at Rosethorn a bit.”

Lark smiled. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s tough.”

“It’s not her I’m worried about,” Briar muttered, but he glanced at Lark and couldn’t help grinning as well, just a little bit. Lark was Lark, like she always was. There was nothing missing here.

“How much does she have to do?”

“It will be some hours yet.”

It had already _been_ hours. Surely it wasn’t good for Sandry to be in this hyper-concentrating trance thing for so long at a time, not without him and Tris and Daja there to help if she needed. 

“We took a break about twenty minutes ago,” said Lark. “I won’t let her go too far.”

Briar scowled at that. “I dunno why we bothered with all this spinning our magic together crap if you can read my mind just like that anyway,” he complained. “Waste of bloody effort.”

Lark laughed, covering her mouth to muffle it a bit. “Give me some credit for knowing you, Briar,” she said once she’d taken her hand away again. “I don’t have to be much of a mind reader to know you’re concerned for her.”

Briar pulled a face. The worst thing about that was that he couldn’t even deny it, not even a little bit.

Lark got up and walked over to him. “I’ll forgive you this one character flaw,” she said, ruffling his hair.

“Only one I’ve got,” Briar declared, and Lark grinned again. “I’ll piss off, leave you to it.”

“Thanks for checking in.”

“No worries.” Briar had come in here because he felt like shit, not really for Sandry’s sake, but why admit that? Let Lark think as well of him as she liked.

He looked at Sandry again, who was still clueless to the fact he was even in the room, just doing row after row after row like a robot. “See you at dinner,” he said to her, and slipped quietly out of the room.

And then where else was there to go? His room, where there was nothing, out to the garden, where there was worse than nothing? He moseyed along down the corridor, thinking maybe he’d go upstairs and see who was about, maybe take a nap in that sunny corner if everything was quiet. 

When he came across Daja sitting halfway down the stairs, chin in hands, it was like jumping back in time. She used to sit there all the time when it was just them two, like she didn’t want to be upstairs all alone but she didn’t want to be downstairs with him and everyone else either.

She raised her eyebrows at him, the question _Do you want something?_

“Just like the old days, hey,” he said. “Two of us here and nothing to say.”

She smiled at that, but it was only a little one. “Those were the days.”

Briar went up and and sat a few steps below Daja and on the opposite side of the stairs, with his back to the rails. He definitely hadn’t done _this_ back in the day. The past was the past, and it was gone.

“I was not happy when they came, at all,” Daja said. “As if dealing with you wasn’t bad enough.”

“I dunno,” Briar said. “I didn’t like them either, but as well, like, the more other kids around the place the more cover you’ve got, you know?”

“No,” said Daja. “I don’t know.” She shifted to sit sideways across one stair like him, but she had to put one foot on the stair below because otherwise she wouldn’t fit right. Long bloody legs.

“Your parents were good people, then, I guess,” said Briar. “Or you would.”

Daja looked down at him, her face blank and calm. “I suppose so.” Then she sighed. “I suppose it’s good they came anyway, I don’t think either of us would have liked if I tried to make you a surrogate brother.”

“Yeah, well I don’t even know what that means, so …”

“Like, a replacement brother for the one I lost.”

Like Roach had kept on thinking maybe Slug or maybe Harmesy or maybe Abs or maybe Trent fucking Peel could be another Turtle, even though he knew no one could ever be. “Yeah.” 

“Sometimes I think you remind me of him, but you don’t really. You just remind me that I used to have a brother. So it’s best that there’s four of us, I think. It’s less the same.”

Daja never talked about herself like this, not even mind-to-mind. Or now Briar thought about it, maybe _especially_ not mind-to-mind. 

He liked it, though. “It’s funny, you having, like, a – a textbook-style family life before.”

“Is it?”

Well, no, it wasn’t, Briar realised. At least when Briar’s life blew up there wasn’t much good left in it by then anyway. When Daja’s life blew up there were fucking casualties. Briar hadn’t meant _funny_ funny, but still, it hadn’t been the greatest thing for him to say. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “It’s not.”

“And we weren’t textbook.”

Briar wasn’t going to back down on that one, but he didn’t want to fight about it either. If Daja didn’t think Mr and Mrs and Uneny and Daja Kisubo, living in an apartment in the city, running a family business and going to church every Sunday was textbook, no skin off Briar’s nose.

So time to change the subject, probably. “Do you know a kid at your school, Ali?”

Daja nodded. “Ali Madlada. You met him yesterday, I know.”

“Yeah.”

Daja shook her head. There was something she wanted to say, Briar could smell it on her, but she was holding it in. “What about Flick?” he asked. “You know her?”

“No.”

“Yeah,” said Briar. “I think she’s maybe older.”

He waited, and it didn’t take long for what was agitating inside Daja to come out. “Don’t you want to get out away from all of that?” she said. “Why jump back into it, when now you have every opportunity in the world to do better?”

 _All of that_. Nice.

“Ali’s our age, you know, but he’s in grade 5, because he got kept back a year. He’s been caught stealing twice this year already, and Sandry heard he got suspended for fighting last year. You’re setting yourself up for trouble if you’re going to be hanging around with him.”

And there it was. Briar knew she thought this shit, but it was nice having it out there, on the record, like. “You know I’ve been a thief as long as I can remember, right? I’ve done a million times worse than any of that. Maybe you should warn him off of me.”

Daja shook her head. “You’re not like that. I know you, you know.”

“Yeah, I know you do. You know _him_ at all?”

“Well –”

“Or you just decided?”

Daja sat quietly, but more like she didn’t want to say what she was thinking than that she thought he was right.

“I’m not jumping back into anything. I like Ali, and I like Flick, and we get on. I’m not robbing a fucking bank.”

Daja’s gaze on him was intense for a long moment, but then it leveled off. 

“I mean, Ali gets busted stealing twice at school in what, four months, and you think I’m itching to go into business with him? You think I didn’t learn my lesson with Slug?”

Daja ignored that. “It’s just you give them an excuse, here, and they’ll tear you to pieces.”

That was an easy one. “Fuck ‘em,” said Briar. “All you need’s your mates.”

“No,” said Daja. “I don’t agree.”

“What else, then?”

She looked at him like it should be obvious and started counting on her fingers. “Community. Principles. Moral standards. Self-respect. Respect of –”

“Textbook as hell,” Briar interrupted. “No offence.”

Daja looked at him in kind of offended disbelief. “You don’t think a person needs principles? Self-respect?”

“Self-respect is nice,” Briar said. “Don’t need it, but.”

“That’s rubbish. You know that’s rubbish.”

“It’s not rubbish. It’s a fact.”

Daja looked away down the stairs, exasperated. “I liked it better when we had nothing to say to each other.”

“I didn’t.”

“No,” she admitted slowly, looking back at him. “Me either.”

“You’ve just got your head up your arse a bit. No hard feelings.”

Daja raised her eyebrows. “I’ve got my head up my arse, no hard feelings?”

Briar grinned. “Exactly.”

“It’s funny,” said Daja, suddenly serious, “how sometimes it’s easier to talk without it.”

Bloody hell, she just had to bring it up. Briar had just gotten himself into his first good mood since his magic was snatched, and here Daja was reminding him all about everything. Real nice.

“I don’t mean I’m happy with this,” she said. “I just think it makes some things easier. In a way.”

Briar reminded himself that out of all of them, Daja was the one who hid her feelings best, and just because she wasn’t whinging or sulking didn’t mean she wasn’t miserable. It was just easy to forget, with her sitting there like the fucking sphinx yammering on about self-respect. “Some things,” he said. “I guess.”

“Mostly not, though.” Daja stood up and offered Briar a hand as well. He took it, and she hauled him up. “Want to help me practise this speech I have to do for school?”

Lying, of course, was morally wrong, and Briar wouldn’t want Daja to think he didn’t have standards. “No.” 

“Didn’t think so,” said Daja. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Ya,” said Briar. 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

When Briar came pounding up the stairs and hammered on Tris’s door, Little Bear woke with a start and let out two gruff barks.

“It’s just Briar,” Tris told him. “This is exactly why we need our magic back. He’s so much quieter.”

“Sandry’s finished,” Briar called through the door. “You wanna see or what?”

Of course Tris wanted to see, but she was hardly going to reward Briar’s impatience by getting all in a tizzy. “I’ll be down in a moment,” she said, putting a bookmark in her book and the book back in its place on the shelf. She made sure Little Bear was sitting politely before she opened the door.

Briar was standing right there waiting for her with his arms crossed. “You are fooling no one,” he said. “Wasting my time and everyone’s to prove you have _dignity_.”

“You could try it some time,” said Tris, calling Little Bear through once she’d stepped through the doorway.

“Yeah, nah,” said Briar. “Come on.”

Despite herself, Tris matched Briar’s pace down the stairs and into where Sandry was working. Daja and Lark were already down there, and Sandry was standing up stretching her arms and back. She looked a bit dazed, but not totally exhausted.

The loom was still sitting on the table, and the cloth that was on it was a haphazard tangle of colour. If Tris squinted really hard she could see the beginnings of a set of four stripes, as she’d seen in the really early stages, but they soon devolved into chaos. No wonder their magic had become so impossible.

Lark walked over and ushered Little Bear out of the room, where he’d padded in behind them. “Not for dogs,” she said firmly, and closed the door.

“And now the powder?” said Sandry, yawning.

Lark put a barrier up again over the door and the window, and then she took a little dark container off a shelf and poured some fine colourful dust into Sandry’s cupped hands.

“What’s that?” said Tris.

“This will clarify the map we have in front of us,” said Lark. “When I need to see magic, I use this.” No doubt sensing that Tris didn’t consider that a full answer, she continued. “It’s flint and haematite, along with lotus, star anise and angelica.”

“That’s plants,” said Briar. “Lotus and star anise, I mean.”

“And angelica is as well,” said Lark. “But we can discuss the details later. Are you ready, Sandry?”

Sandry nodded.

“I would suggest everyone sits down,” said Lark. “This will be acting on your magic, and though your magic isn’t with you right now, it’s still fundamentally yours. The effect may be strong enough that you feel the echo of it.”

“Another jolt?” said Daja, taking the same chair as last time.

“It’s a hard sensation to describe,” said Lark. “But it shouldn’t last for long. Everyone ready?”

No one said no, so Lark placed her hands on Sandry’s shoulders and the two of them closed their eyes. Sandry frowned for a moment, in that way she had when she was working her absolute hardest, and then she reached out and sprinkled the dust Lark had given her all evenly across the woven cloth.

It flared so bright that Tris closed her eyes tightly and turned her face away, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A horrible grinding pressure started up in her teeth and ran down her spine and out through all her bones. It got heavier and heavier, so heavy that Tris thought she must be about to completely implode. It was worse than earthquakes, worse than holding in air pressure, worse than than everything, and then with a little pop, it was gone. Tris opened her eyes again, only a fraction at first to check that the blazing light had gone out, and then gradually more as she regained her composure.

Lark was sitting on the floor with her head between her knees, and Sandry was slouched back in her chair, but the two of them were holding hands tightly, so Tris supposed they were both at least still conscious. Across the table from Tris, Daja was hunched over in her chair groaning, both arms wrapped tight around her belly.

Tris turned her head to look at Briar, and he simply wasn’t there. She stared at the storage compartments on the wall for a few shocked seconds before she thought to look downwards and saw him lying flat on his back on the ground, arms splayed to the side, chest heaving like he’d just been running for his life.

Daja was the first to speak. “Ow,” she said, slowly uncurling to sit straight on her chair again.

“Did it work?” Briar panted.

Tris looked at the cloth. “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

The colours were so bright and solid now that Tris had to consciously remind herself that the cloth had originally been made out of plain white silk. At the start of the cloth, there were four equal vertical stripes, and by the end it was nothing but a mismash of green, red, yellow and blue with absolutely no discernable pattern whatsoever. If it went up in a gallery, Tris was sure it would be hailed as a masterpiece of abstract art.

“I apologise,” said Lark hoarsely, climbing to her feet. “I never imagined the effect would be so strong. The four of you, combined and entangled…” Her voice trailed off, and she walked around to offer Briar a hand up before coming back to stand behind Sandry again, who was very slowly leaning over to run her hand across her work.

Briar slid back into his seat beside Tris, his breathing slowly returning to normal. 

“So what happens now?” Daja asked Lark. 

Tris watched Lark’s brown eyes flicker thoughtfully over the cloth. “Your powers will need to be separated,” she said. “Though this – it won’t be an easy job.”

“It’s a mess,” breathed Sandry gloomily. “How can I separate all this out?”

“The fibres are tiny,” said Daja, leaning over the cloth. “Can you even control every single one of them?”

“And won’t it just climb around all over again?” said Briar, getting up and standing right by Tris so he could see better. “Since it just got worse as it went on?”

“If there was a way to just stop them from crossing over in the –”

Sandry cut Tris off with a sudden idea. “Borders,” she said. “A plain border, with no magic in it, between a stripe for each one of us. Would that work?”

“It might,” said Lark. “A border wide enough that no fibres can cross over it might just do the trick.”

“We’d be totally separate again?” said Daja. Tris could hear the same wistful note in her voice that Tris felt in her heart. 

“I don’t think so,” Sandry said. “I mean, it’s still all one piece of cloth. We still have the circle. It’s just our magics won’t go crossing into each other like they have been.”

“You think or you hope?” Briar asked pointedly.

Sandry stared right at him while she thought about what he said, and that more than anything showed that she was tired. Sandry was usually so careful to behave in a certain way, trying to project the best version of herself, to be what others wanted her to be. At the moment, she was just being herself. “I really don’t feel like this will separate us,” she said, speaking with belief instead of with her usual determined, stubborn, encouraging optimism. “Honestly.”

“So now it’s a _feeling_ ,” Briar grumbled. “Terrific.”

“It is terrific,” said Daja. “Unless you want to complain about the last time Sandry had a feeling she could do something with our magic, and how that turned out?”

Briar didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so,” said Daja. “If Sandry feels like this will work, I believe her.”

“As if you don’t run on instinct and gut feelings yourself half the time,” Tris added.

“Okay, okay, gimme a break,” said Briar. “I was just saying.”

“Do you all still have your second bobbins with you?” said Lark. “Sandry will use those for the next phase.”

“I’m not ready to start again yet,” said Sandry quickly. “I think I need a nap.”

“Of course,” said Lark, squeezing her shoulders. “If you feel up to it after dinner you could make a start, otherwise wait until tomorrow.”

“I don’t really want to miss school tomorrow,” said Sandry. “I’ll try and do it tonight.”

Lark shook her head. “Not a chance. The only way you finish tonight is by overexerting yourself, and even if that was on the table, which it isn’t, you still wouldn’t be going to school the next day.”

“I said I’d give Michelle her necklace back,” Sandry said, yawning.

“She can wait another day,” said Daja. “Don’t be silly.”

“Might as well tell a fish not to breathe water,” said Tris.

Sandry stuck out her tongue at Tris and stood up. “Can you wake me up in a little bit, please?” she asked Lark. 

“Of course.” Lark helped Sandry to her feet and went with her from the room.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Daja was out the back, practising her speech where nobody could hear her, when Frostpine’s car came rolling up the driveway and pulled in behind the ute and the four wheel drive. That’s when it occurred to her that despite them all being off school tomorrow, and despite this being the second-weirdest weekend she’d ever spent at this house and not even feeling like a weekend, the fact was that it was a Sunday, and it was also a fact that Frostpine came around for dinner every other Sunday, and the final fact in the chain was that this was one of those Sundays.

And Daja’s belly was full. They’d already had an early dinner so that Sandry could get in a bit of weaving before bedtime, even though Niko had surprised them all by turning up at five o’clock and asking if he could have another look at the circle. Rosethorn, who was looking after the circle while Sandry worked her magic, had told him he couldn’t, actually, but would he like to stay for dinner and brush up on his social graces, which Daja thought was a fairly rude thing to say, as well as being a fair bit hypocritical coming from Rosethorn, but then again, Niko had been awfully rude himself earlier, so Daja couldn’t feel too sorry for him about it.

And now it was actually normal dinner time, and they’d all already eaten, and Daja of all people should have remembered that Frostpine was going to be coming over. Everything was just so – so _much_ that it had completely slipped her mind.

“G’day,” he said, his voice loud and carrying as ever. “Briar about? I’ve got those sunflower seeds he wanted to try.”

“Um,” said Daja. “Not sure.”

Frostpine gave her an odd look as he walked up the couple of the steps onto the verandah. “Not sure?”

“Ah, Frostpine,” said Niko, sticking his head out the back door. “Just the man I wanted to speak to.”

“Niko,” Frostpine acknowledged, stepping through the back door. Then he turned back to Daja, whose legs had carried her along after him. “You’re not sure?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” said Daja, wishing to God she’d thought properly about what she was going say to Frostpine about all of this, instead of fooling herself that she wouldn’t have to, “Sandry has my magic at the moment.”

“Sandry has your magic at the moment,” he echoed slowly, putting the packet of seeds down on the kitchen table in a slow, distracted kind of way that didn’t bode well for the future of the conversation. His eyes stayed locked on Daja. “Any particular reason why?”

“She’s doing mapping,” said Daja.

Frostpine looked at Niko then, the unhappiness in his expression shifting slowly into hostility. “You’ve got them giving their power up to others now, have you?” he said, his voice started out low but getting quickly louder. “‘No, Sandry has it at the moment.’ Like lending a book!”

Briar appeared partway down the corridor, hovering just within view and no closer. His eyes met Daja’s for a long, silent moment, then he switched to watching Frostpine.

Daja did the same. “She’s giving it back,” she ventured.

Frostpine ignored that. “Niko, she’s eleven! Eleven! You shouldn’t be telling her to give up her power to anyone in the universe, let alone _another_ –”

“What on earth is this racket all about?” said Rosethorn, coming out of her room with a disapproving frown.

“This _racket_ ,” said Frostpine, “is about the fact that my student, _aged eleven_ , has apparently surrendered all her magic to another _eleven-year-old_ student under your care!”

“And if you shout louder, you could disturb that student’s work even more than you already have,” snapped Rosethorn. “Get a grip. They’re all safe.”

“Sandry’s twelve,” Daja pointed out. She’d thought Frostpine knew that.

“Really not the point, Daja,” said Frostpine. “But thank you.”

“This wasn’t done on a whim,” Rosethorn told Frostpine. “It’s absolutely necessary.”

“Oh, is it?” replied Frostpine, his voice rising again. “Absolutely necessary! And why is that?”

“She’s mapping their magic,” said Niko. “Unless you’d prefer to delay that exercise until the deterioration is beyond repair?”

“What deterioration?” Tris said sharply from somewhere past Briar, completely out of sight. “You never said anything about deterioration.”

“Deterioration?” Frostpine looked at Daja now. He did look betrayed, but at least he wasn’t shouting at her like he had been at Niko and Rosethorn. “When were you going to mention _deterioration_ to me?”

That was unfair, Daja thought. This was the first time she’d heard about it herself. The accusation in his voice and the unfairness of it clenched in her throat.

“We’re not keeping secrets from you, idiot,” said Rosethorn. “The first we heard of it ourselves was yesterday afternoon.”

“And you just went straight ahead with – with _this_. Whatever the hell _this_ is.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Rosethorn’s temper was clearly rising too, but it was coming out cold where Frostpine’s was red-hot. “We talked with the children, and I spoke to Moonstream, and we acted.”

“Oh you talked it over with Moonstream, did you? You had time for that?”

“I suppose you think we should have come running straight to you instead? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous, am I? A phone call, Rosethorn! Is one single fricking phone call too much to ask?”

Where was Lark? With Lark and Sandry both out of the room, Daja didn’t know who was going to head this fight off. Tris had edged forward to stand next to Briar now, and the two of them were watching with interest, but Daja doubted they’d put themselves in the middle of it. Niko should do something, but she’d already seen what he was like in an argument if things didn’t go his way. Frostpine was upset, and Daja didn’t see Rosethorn taking a backward step.

Which left one person. “Um,” said Daja, moving slowly towards Frostpine. “I don’t think it’s very good for Sandry to get distracted at the moment. I don’t think we should shout.”

“Let’s all take a breath,” said Niko, nodding. “There’s no need for anyone to be shouting at anyone else.”

“I quite agree,” said Lark, coming out past Tris and Briar with a rare frown on her face. “What’s the commotion?”

“We neglected to tell Frostpine about the mapping, and he’s taken exception to it,” Rosethorn said scornfully.

“You just went on your merry way, told _my_ student to give up _her own magic_ without a word to me, without –”

“We had to do it,” Briar said, from where he was now sitting cross-legged on the ground, his back against the wall of the corridor. “Unless you want me starting bushfires all over the place, and everything Daja touches in your shop coming to life, and Tris making metal super-whatever –“

“Superconductive,” Tris provided.

“And Sandry sparking and arcing all over her knitting or whatever,” Briar finished. “It absolutely fucking sucks but what else are we gonna do?”

Frostpine looked from Briar to the adults to Daja. “Sandry has all of your magic,” he said, sounding suddenly queasy. “All four.”

Daja nodded.

“Are you sure she can bear it?”

Daja nodded again even though Frostpine was looking at Lark now, dismay and concern on his face.

“She can,” said Lark, her voice gentle and assured. It was directed at Frostpine, but Daja found herself breathing easier as well. “I’ve been with her every step of the way, and she can. She’s finished the mapping already, and she’s made a good start on the reparatory stage.”

Frostpine was calmer now, but he still had a dark look in his eyes. “I’d like to see this for myself,” he said.

“Just keep a lid on it,” said Rosethorn. “She’s working.”

Lark turned to go back down the corridor, and Frostpine followed her away. After a moment, Niko went along with them. Once they were gone, Briar sprang to his feet and he and Tris came into the kitchen with Daja and Rosethorn.

Feeling miserable, Daja went and sat on the couch. She still had her cue cards in her hands, but schoolwork was the last thing she wanted to think about.

“It’s just a flash fire,” Rosethorn said, coming and sitting in one of the armchairs. “He doesn’t burn for long.”

“I wanted to just fix it and then tell him after,” said Daja.

“That’s the thing with secrets,” said Tris, sitting down in the other chair. “People always find them out.”

“Oh, now you’re so wise,” said Daja, suddenly exhausted beyond belief. 

“Not true anyway,” said Briar, still hovering around in the kitchen.

“What?” said Tris.

“All the secrets people still keep, you never know about,” he said. “Could be millions never get found out.”

“And you’re the great secret keeper, of course,” said Daja.

“Maybe I am.”

“I doubt that.”

“Look, just ‘cause we fucking merged our souls together doesn’t mean you know every fact,” said Briar. 

“Like what?”

Briar made a face at her and then glanced at Rosethorn.

“Oh,” said Daja. She’d kind of forgotten that Rosethorn could hear them.

“Anyway, if it’s a secret why would I tell you anyway.”

“There’s a difference between keeping a secret and just not telling people things,” said Tris. “If something never comes up, that doesn’t mean it’s a secret. It just means it’s not that important.”

“It could still be important,” said Daja, knowing exactly what Tris was talking about.

“Ya,” said Briar. “I reckon it is.”

Rosethorn got up, went back into her room and closed the door behind her. Because she hadn’t said anything, it was hard to tell if she was giving them privacy, was bored of the conversation or just had something else she wanted to be doing. Daja looked at Briar, thinking he might know, but he’d turned away as well and was browsing through the fridge.

“We had dinner an hour ago,” Daja pointed out to him.

“Frostpine didn’t. What’s he eat?”

It took Daja a moment to register that Briar was looking to feed someone else other than himself, and as soon as she did, shame rose in her. Briar, who hadn’t even had a house for more than six months, was already a better host than she was.

She put her cue cards down and got up to join Briar in the kitchen, trying to think what Frostpine liked to eat. It wasn’t something she really paid a lot of attention to. “At work he brings sandwiches for lunch, I think. That’s not very dinner-y, though.”

“Toast it,” Tris suggested from over in the armchair. “Then you’ve got a hot dinner.”

“There’s still ham, yeah?” said Briar.

Daja opened the bottom drawer under the stove and pulled out the jaffle iron.

“Good call.” Within seconds, Briar had cheese, the cold meat container, baked beans, tomato sauce, eggs, Vegemite, peanut butter and an onion out on the bench. “Bags I not the onion,” he said.

“Bread?”

“Oh yeah,” said Briar. “Bread. What kind?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Wholemeal, then.” He took half a loaf out of the fridge and slung it onto the bench.

“Because that’s the kind you don’t like,” Daja realised. It was oddly comforting to know that when Briar was giving food to someone else, he still did it in a selfish kind of way.

“No,” Briar said, in the least convincing denial Daja had ever heard. “He just looks like a wholemeal kind of guy.”

“Says who?”

“Got a wholemeal kind of an aura about him.”

Daja couldn’t help but laugh at that, despite everything.

“Ha,” Briar said triumphantly, tossing her the onion. “Gotcha.”

So now he was looking after her as well as Frostpine. Daja felt like she should be cross about being manipulated, but he had made her feel better, and honestly, she was grateful for it. “I’m not cutting this,” she said, and rolled the onion back across the bench. The adults would come back out soon enough, and then no doubt there’d be conversations, but Project Jaffle would do for the meantime.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Niko came back from Lark’s workroom before any of the others. Daja and Briar were intensely occupied in making Frostpine something to eat, and Tris was sitting alone in the living room, and without a moment’s hesitation Niko headed in her direction.

Tris was fine now, really. It was all in the past.

“How are you, Tris?” he asked briskly, sitting down on the couch and crossing one leg over the other at the knee.

“You’re sitting on Daja’s cards.”

Niko half stood up, fished the cards out from underneath him and lay them on the armrest. He returned his attention to Tris.

“You’re not like them,” she said, before he could make any more polite enquiries as to her wellbeing. “I don’t want you to be like them.”

He stared at her, his expression neutral but his eyes calculating. “Explain, please.”

Tris didn’t want to explain. There wasn’t anything to explain. “If you apologise, I forgive you. That’s it. There doesn’t have to be anything else.”

“I do apologise,” he said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together in his lap. “I sincerely apologise for my behaviour earlier.”

“Then I forgive you,” Tris said. 

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.”

Niko breathed out a sigh of relief, leaned back on the couch and lifted one ankle to rest on the other knee. He stroked his moustache. “I am, however, interested to hear how you are,” he said. This time, the question didn’t jar in Tris’s ears. “How are you coping without your magic?”

“I can’t talk about it until I have it back,” Tris told him. “I don’t like thinking about it until then.”

He was disappointed, and Tris could tell he very much wanted to ask again, but in the end he accepted the answer. Not with good grace, but he accepted it and moved on. “How did you get on with the Breiman, then?”

“It’s impossible. You were right, I couldn’t understand it at all.”

“A few years down the track, perhaps.”

It was all very well for Niko to talk about a few years down the track; he’d had dozens and dozens of years to get on with learning anything he wanted to. He didn’t realise how long it was going to take Tris to get to university, how slowly time crawled for someone who wasn’t even a teenager yet. If only Tris could somehow just skip straight past high school. If only.

“I’ll try and find something more suited to children,” Niko offered. “It might take some looking, but it is critically important to have a good grasp of statistical methods, common tricks people use and mistakes they make, especially in a data-heavy field like meteorology.”

The moment the sentence ended, a light rain started to fall outside, like he’d summoned it. Tris hated that it had come as a surprise to her. Niko looked at Tris, and Tris stared at her hands. 

“In fact,” Niko went on, for all the world like he’d noticed nothing, “I was thinking it would be a good idea for you to set up a weather station here at the house. It’s a good start, I think, for you in both keeping and analysing data. So for next weekend, I’d like you to come back to me with a plan and a list of materials you’re going to need. It might be worth speaking with Rosethorn about appropriate sites and the practicalities involved. You’ll also have to decide what data you’re going to record, how and how often. What research you do and how you come to that decision is entirely up to you.”

This was the first bit of homework Niko had ever given Tris that she really didn’t want to do, at all. A list of materials? Was she going to be _building_? 

But Niko was her teacher, and she couldn’t very well refuse the tasks he set her. Not without a good reason, and Tris strongly suspected the reasons she had weren’t ones that Niko was likely to accept. “By next week?”

Niko raised his eyebrows. “I hear you won’t be going to school tomorrow, and I’d be very surprised indeed to learn that you’re not at least a week ahead in all your homework already.”

“Of course I am,” Tris said. “That’s not the point.”

“So what is the point?” When Tris didn’t answer straight away, he nodded knowingly, which Tris found extraordinarily presumptuous of him. Why ask in the first place if he thought he knew already? 

“You’re a child, Tris. You’re an extremely intelligent, academically gifted eleven year old child.”

Tris didn’t know what to do except scowl at him. 

“Just because I’m accustomed to teaching adults and I’ve given you access to tertiary education materials doesn’t mean backyard science experiments are beneath you,” he said decisively, standing up and tugging his trousers at the knees to straighten them out again. There was something in his expression that was almost apologetic. “Understanding theory is not the only skill that needs to be developed in a scientist. I have no intention of passing my own flaws and prejudices on to you, Tris. You’re my student, and we all want our students to end up better than we are, in a multitude of ways. You’re going to collect rainwater in a homemade container and write down the temperature on pen and paper like a mere mortal. That’s the lesson.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want their student to be better than them,” said Tris. “I’d rather be the best.”

Niko smiled, and it made him look old and normal, less like Niko somehow. “But the best teachers are the ones who produce the best students,” he said. “That’s what we’re in it for.”

“Then I’m never going to be a teacher.”

“There’s absolutely no obligation on you to be so,” said Niko. The smile had left his face, but there was humour in his eyes. “But as I am _your_ teacher, there is an obligation on you to have that plan ready for me by next Sunday.”

Tris knew when she was beaten. “And a list of materials,” she said. “I know.”

Slow, heavy footsteps came down the corridor. With a tight, tired expression that Tris had never seen on him before, Frostpine walked straight past Daja and Briar in the kitchen and Tris and Niko in the living room, without looking at any of them, and right out the back door.

Tris listened out for the sound of Frostpine’s car starting up, but the only noise that came from outside was the quiet patter of rain.

“Is it done?” Daja asked Briar. 

“Mostly. Don’t burn yourself, iron’s still hot.”

“Why would I – oh. Yeah.”

After a few moments getting organised, Daja went out after Frostpine with a plate and a plastic cup. 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Daja could tell Frostpine wasn’t in the mood to eat, but he took the plate from her, and the cup, and he said thank you, and he ate his dinner standing looking out into the rain. He didn’t even comment on the baked beans and cheese and Vegemite jaffle, which Briar had insisted was the height of deliciousness but Daja wouldn’t even consider giving to Little Bear for fear the dog would hate her for the rest of his life.

Once Frostpine was done eating, he put his plate down by his feet, leaned his elbows on the railing and let out a big, gusty sigh. “Daja, girl,” he said. “You couldn’t have told me?”

She could have. She certainly could have told him, and it had been hard not to, at times. But however upset Frostpine might be about it, that didn’t mean that Daja had done the wrong thing. She had stood with her friends, and she would stand by the decision. “If it was just me, I would have, straight away,” she said. “But it’s not just me, Frostpine. It’s all of us.”

He turned to face her. “It is you, though,” he said, pointing a finger for emphasis. “It’s you, and I’m supposed to look after you.”

Daja wasn’t sure if that was right. Frostpine was her teacher and her friend, but she didn’t think he was responsible for her in the same way that Lark or Rosethorn were – or even Niko, since he was the one who’d brought them all. And that wasn’t even counting her friends, who all looked after her as well. “We are looked after,” she said.

Frostpine tsked between his teeth and shook his head. “I’m not talking about ‘you’ as in all you kids together,” he said. “I mean you, Daja Kisubo. You, the girl standing beside me right now without her magic.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying. It’s not just me that gave my magic to Sandry, we all did. And we’re getting it back.” _Hopefully._

“All right,” said Frostpine, standing up straight and turning to Daja with his arms crossed over his chest. “Tell me something. How long did you think about it before you said yes? How hard did you think about it?”

“Well, we pretty much had to do it straight away,” Daja explained. “Briar shot lightning, and the thing with Tris. Anything could have happened next. We had to fix it.”

“But that wasn’t the question,” he said. “I don’t like it at all – _at all_ – but I have been persuaded that this thing was necessary. Okay? I’m not saying you made the wrong choice.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“It’s –” Frostpine uncrossed his arms and then didn’t seem to know what to do with them. In the end he slipped them into his jeans pockets, which Daja couldn’t remember ever seeing him do before. “Look. Correct me if I’m wrong, Daja, but it comes across to me as having been a snap decision, and I don’t think it should’ve been. I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew it had been thought through.”

“It was. Rosethorn talked to Moonstream, and they planned it.”

Frostpine shook his head. “I mean by _you_.”

“It’s my choice to trust them, though,” said Daja. “When we were keeping it all secret, I thought we should tell. I always thought we should, all along. But I decided not to, and that was my choice. We’re not a hive mind, you know. We argue and we decide things. And then when we did tell, the plan to do the mapping made sense. Lark and Rosethorn said we should do it, and Sandry said she could. We checked with Moonstream. I thought it was an emergency, and so I trusted them. That was my choice.”

Daja hadn’t meant to say so much, but as she remembered how things had happened, she spoke it aloud to think it through. It hadn’t seemed like a snap decision at the time. She hadn’t felt like she was acting too hastily. It had seemed perfectly sensible to go along with everything, and Frostpine had even said it had ended up being the right call. 

But he was so serious, and so worried, and that made Daja think twice. Had it really had to happen that fast?

“I’ll tell you something,” said Frostpine. “I don’t think you’ll understand what I’m saying if I don’t tell you this.” He turned to look out into the garden again, though with night falling and the rain falling as well, you couldn’t see very much of it any more. “When I was a boy, my magic was taken from me for eight years.”

It was such an awful, awful thought that Daja had no reaction in her except to stare at him and hope desperately he was joking, or exaggerating or – eight years? That was –

“I don’t mean to scare you,” said Frostpine, turning his head and looking at her, but not quite into her eyes. Then he did look at her directly, with a tiny twist of the mouth and a quirk of one eyebrow. “Well, maybe I do, come to think of it. But only a little bit.”

“Eight years,” Daja croaked.

Frostpine’s expression went flat again, and his voice was even hoarser than Daja’s. “And it was those nearest and dearest to me that did it. Different circumstances, very different circumstances, but the thought of anything like that ever happening to you – I need you to promise me, Daja, you’ll always remember to think of yourself. Always.”

“I do.”

Frostpine rubbed his beard with the side of his finger and sniffed. Was he crying? It didn’t seem like it, but –

“It’s tricky, when you love people,” he said. “That’s when it can be hardest to see clearly.”

Daja sidled over to stand right by his side. The moment she started to move, Frostpine had his arm out ready to wrap around her shoulders. “That’s so awful what happened to you.”

Frostpine hugged her extra tight for a moment, then relaxed his grip. “So you can see why I might be concerned,” he said. 

“I think I do see clearly, though,” Daja said. “I know how it looks, like we’re giving everything up to Sandry because Lark and Rosethorn said so. And Moonstream I guess. My parents would be rolling in their graves if I did that. I mean, they still might be, I suppose. I don’t know. But it’s not like that. We went to Lark and Rosethorn because we wanted to fix it. It was our decision.”

“To give away your magic,” Frostpine said very, very softly.

“I wouldn’t give it to just anyone,” Daja said. How could she explain that if there was anyone in the whole universe that she could trust to do a thing like this, it was Sandry? There was no way to say it in words.

“Well, I do like Sandry,” said Frostpine. “She’s a ripper. But Daja –”

“You don’t know her, though. I know her, Frostpine. I know her here.” Daja touched her temple. “And I know her here.” She laid an open hand over her heart.

Frostpine nodded. “You do that.”

“She saved our lives by doing this. She asked us to trust her down there in the fire, and we all did, before we ever were together. Not just me, Frostpine. Briar trusted her. Tris trusted her. That’s how it was. And she didn’t let us down, and she won’t let us down. I know it. There are no buts.”

Frostpine sighed. “Just remember what I said, okay?”

Daja’s mind jumped right back to the eight years. She was having a hard enough time of things without magic for one day. She wanted to know more about what had happened, but she just as much didn’t want to know a single thing about it. She hadn’t much thought about Frostpine as a younger man, or as a boy, and thinking about him miserable all those years, eight years…

“Daja?”

“Sorry?”

“Remember to look after yourself. Okay? Don’t get so caught up being part of a group that you forget you’re your own person.”

“I won’t,” Daja promised. “I never will.”

“Right, then. Deadly.”

“I’m sorry I scared you.”

Frostpine moved his hand up to cup Daja’s head and squeezed her tight against him. “Ah, it’s good for me,” he said, but without his usual energy. “Tests out the old heart muscle.”

“I’ll tell you as soon as I get my magic back. The very second.”

He squeezed her once more and let go. “Thank you,” he said. 

“Thank you, too,” Daja said. “For looking out for me.”

“Count on that. Always.” He bent down to pick up the plate and cup. “And thanks for dinner.”

“It was Briar’s idea,” Daja admitted. “I just helped him do it. I couldn’t stop him with the Vegemite.”

Frostpine chuckled. “I didn’t think that would’ve been you, somehow.”

“Was it awful?”

“Not as bad as you’d think.”

“Really?”

“You know what, speaking of you and Briar, I’d have liked to have seen that rose,” Frostpine said wistfully. “That sounds like really something.” He went to the door and held it open for Daja.

“You can see it,” Daja said going through. The kitchen and the living room were both empty now, and of course, she couldn’t tell where any of the others were. “It’s not alive any longer, but it’s not dead, like withered up or anything. It’s just back how it was, except bigger and with leaves, and a thorn.”

“You don’t say,” said Frostpine, sounding intrigued.

“I’ll bring it down,” said Daja. 

“I’ll find the boy and thank him for dinner,” said Frostpine. “Then we can sit down and have a look at it?”

“Sure,” said Daja. “I’d like that.”

Frostpine smiled, not as big as he usually would, but real all the way through. “Me too.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 _All right_ , Lark said. There was a hand on Sandry’s shoulder, and the world came back to her slowly – Lark standing beside her, rain pattering on the roof, a mug of Milo somewhere tantalisingly close by.

“It’s nine o’clock,” said Lark. “That’s all for today.”

“I could do a little bit more,” Sandry said, but the moment her mind had been pulled away from her work the magic had been broken, and her last few words were taken over by a huge yawn.

“I beg your pardon?” Lark said, her eyes laughing as she handed Sandry the big red mug.

Sandry started to laugh, but that didn’t get far either before the yawn came up out of her.

“You’ve done wonderfully well,” Lark said. “And now it’s well and truly bedtime.”

That did sound good to Sandry. She almost didn’t want to drink the Milo, because then she’d have to brush her teeth again and it would take longer to get to bed, but it smelled so good, and it was so warm, and Lark had brought it for her, and Sandry had never in her life been able to turn down a mug of hot Milo.

She took a sip, then a gulp. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Should I just leave this here?” Sandry didn’t like the thought of leaving her weaving there half finished, alone all night. Not when it was so critically and desperately important.

“It will be safe,” Lark assured her. “I promise.”

Sandry nodded and stood up, cupping her mug in both hands. Her legs were stiff, so she slowly walked around the room to stretch out her muscles as she drank her drink. Once she was done, Lark reached out for the mug, and Sandry gave it to her.

“Thank you,” Sandry said again.

“Thank you, my dear,” said Lark, giving her a one-armed hug and a kiss on the forehead. “Sleep well, and don’t even think about setting an early alarm.”

“But –”

“Your magic needs a rest just as much as your body does,” said Lark. “We won’t be picking this back up a fraction of a second before nine tomorrow morning at the absolute earliest.”

Sandry heart sank. “Nine o’clock?” 

“Nine o’clock.”

Sandry could feel another yawn coming, so there wouldn’t be much sense in trying to claim she wouldn’t be tired. And arguments with Lark always went the same way, anyway. The argument turned into a discussion, and by the end of the discussion everyone agreed. Sandry had no idea how to stop it happening. “Okay,” she said. “Good night. And I won’t forget to brush my teeth.”

“Good night,” said Lark. “Well done today.”

Sandry covered her yawn with her hand and padded across to the bathroom, thinking about bed and bed and bed, and bed.


	7. Chapter 7

  


It had been agony to wait until 9 o’clock to be able to start again, but now that Sandry was sitting down again and ready to go, the work she had ahead of her was suddenly real, and huge, and she just wanted to go back to bed. 

In the beginning, she’d felt good doing this. It was an honourable thing to take the problem she’d created and sensibly, methodically set about fixing it. It just would have been nice if the others could have shared the load. It would have been nice if she could spend time with them, actually, instead of being shut away in here weaving their magic, all alone, like the only place they existed was in her head. 

Sandry had had imaginary friends before. Whenever she’d been left on her own, she’d invented whole different worlds that she lived in and she’d had so many deep, meaningful conversations with so many people, and the only problem had been that none of them were real.

It wasn’t like Sandry actually thought Daja, Tris and Briar were figments of her imagination or anything like that. She knew what was real and what wasn’t. She just didn’t like the feeling of it, and she didn’t like spending so much time locked up inside her own head. She didn’t like how she could be plunged deep into all her friends’ magic and at the same time so horribly separate from them.

But the sooner she started, the sooner she would be able to finish. She was getting towards the end of Briar’s stripe after the head start she’d gotten last night, and when she’d finished that she’d be a quarter of the way done.

“What’s on your mind?” Lark asked softly.

Sandry frowned. She hadn’t even started the weaving again, and she’d already forgotten that Lark was in the room. And what could she say to that question? That she was just sitting around feeling sorry for herself?

Lark would already know that she was. “I just don’t like doing this very much,” Sandry said, trying to make it sound like a fact and not a whinge.

“I know,” said Lark. “I know it’s very hard on you. But I think I also know what you’ll say if I suggest having a bit more of a rest before you settle in again.”

“It will just be worse if I have to wait any more,” Sandry agreed. “I’m going to finish it today.”

“Or tomorrow, if it’s too much today.”

Sandry shook her head. She knew Lark was keeping a close eye on her – making sure she wasn’t overexerting herself, as she put it. Sandry was secretly very glad of it, but all the same, this _wasn’t_ going to be too much for her, and she would finish it today, and then everything would go back to normal. It was just one more day of work.

Sandry let out a gusty sigh and picked up the shuttle with the rest of Briar’s silk still wrapped around it.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

“Okay,” said Tris. “Go.”

Briar looked at the list in front of him. There was like twenty things on there, and it wasn’t like Tris couldn’t read it herself. 

Daja came across and looked over his shoulder. “You’re really going to pretend you can’t read the words ‘olive oil’?” she said.

“Don’t give him the answers,” said Tris.

“He can read ‘olive oil’.”

“Olive oil,” said Briar. “Fine. Olive oil.”

Daja fetched it out of the pantry.

“Brown onion. Garlic.”

“How much garlic?” Daja asked.

“Five,” said Briar, since it said two. “Says crushed. Why the fuck do you spell zucchini like this?”

“Like what?”

“It’s Italian,” said Tris. “What else?”

Daja came around to look at the recipe. “They’re courgettes back home,” she said. “Try spelling that.”

“No thanks,” said Briar. “Carrots, celery, cauliflower. Pasta, apparently. Beef stock. Canned tomatoes. Basil.”

Tris went into the pantry and Daja rummaged around in the fridge. Briar took the time to start reading through the instructions in case there were any new words he had to figure out.

“Where do we find basil?” Tris asked.

“In the garden,” said Briar.

“Can you get some?”

“I’m reading this.”

“I’ll get it,” said Daja, laying a half a bunch of celery down on the bench. “What does it look like?”

“Green,” said Briar, frowning over the word ‘occasionally’. It was easy enough to read, but writing it down he always got stuck with which letters to double. Every way he wrote it, it always looked wrong. It looked fine here, of course. “Leaves, you know.”

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll just find a picture.”

“Pull up a spring onion as well,” said Briar. “She likes rings of it in soup.”

“Now, hold on,” said Daja firmly. 

Briar finished the sentence he was reading – why the hell did you have to add cold water to soup? – and then looked around. Daja was standing at the back door with her phone in her hand, waiting for him. “What?”

“I can pick some leaves. That’s fine. But you want me to pull a whole plant out of Rosethorn’s garden?”

“It’s just like pulling a carrot, like all the ones already in the fridge,” Briar told her. “You want to eat it, you got to pull it out of the ground. It’s not like you’re ripping out a whole pumpkin plant or something.”

“If you’re worried about getting in trouble with Rosethorn, just ask her,” said Tris, looking over everything they had out on the bench and then pulling out a couple of chopping boards from the cupboard.

“Oh, just ask her?” said Daja. “I notice you didn’t volunteer to go and fetch anything from the garden.”

“Jesus,” said Briar. “You’d think Rosethorn had a sawn-off in her back pocket, the way you two constantly crap your dacks. Gimme a sec, then I’ll go.” 

Daja came back into the kitchen, and her and Tris started to chop stuff up – carrots, celery, zucchini. Briar made it all the way to the end of the recipe, to “Stir in basil. Serve,” and sat soaking it in for a little bit. Little Roach, the dirty little bug that scuttled from dark spot to dark spot and managed to always be just that little bit too tricky to kill, was out here just casually reading recipes for vegetable soup, learning how to spell ‘zucchini’ and ‘occasionally’ and garnishing his soup with fresh-grown spring onion and basil.

It was so ridiculous Briar couldn’t even think about it. He shoved the tablet across in case Daja or Tris needed to look at the recipe, told them, “Won’t be long,” and hopped quickly out the back door. The garden was still a ghost garden, and he could feel the start of a shiver in his spine as he squeezed through the tomatoes to get to the basil, but he wasn’t going to be out here long, and he wasn’t such a wuss he couldn’t pick a bit of basil and pull up one spring onion. It was really the absolute rock-bottom least he could do.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Sandry always thought of Briar in sunlight – in his favourite napping spot upstairs, on the floor in his room right by the window, out in the garden, in Frostpine’s backyard, out walking the streets of Wangaratta. His magic to her was warm, strong, prickly at times and always that little bit wild, like a rosebush that was ready to either break out in thorns or burst into a hundred flowers at a moment’s notice. There were echoes in him of all the different lives – all the _awful_ lives – he’d lived before, but just like he’d worked out how to live in those ways, now he was getting used to this life, here, with all of them.

Here was a boy who was quick to smile and quick to swear, a boy who dedicated himself to gardening, to reading and to his friends but could never be bothered brushing his teeth or or making his bed or training his dog. He always left towels on the bathroom floor and he always came and sat with Sandry for a while if he was awake when she had a bad dream. He was one of the most annoying boys Sandry had ever known but was also the one she loved the most. 

Sandry was sorry when she came to the end of his stripe, but she didn’t linger on it. She laid down the empty shuttle, sat for two minutes and meditated, settling her mind to make sure none of anybody’s magic would get mixed up in the border stripe, which had to be perfectly empty of any and all magic so that it would work as a barrier and no magic would be able to cross over it in either direction. 

She reached for one of the shuttles of plain white cotton, but her hand found a plastic cup instead. She took a long drink of water, and when she set the cup back down the shuttle was there ready for her.

“Thank you,” Sandry murmured, and started on the first row.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

“Candles?” said Daja.

“Fire hazard,” Briar responded instantly.

“Bubble bath?”

“Gross.”

“Soap?”

“Is there anything actually good in that list?” Briar said. “Or just girl shit?”

“Boys don’t use soap? Doesn’t that explain a lot.”

Tris reached over and slid the tablet in front of her. If they were going to get into one of _those_ arguments, she didn’t want to listen to it. If she didn’t pay attention, it couldn’t upset her.

There _was_ a lot of what Briar would term “girl shit” in the list, but almost everything on it was something Sandry would love. When Tris clicked through links and looked over the instructions, though, there was a lot of setting overnight or special equipment required. Candles looked very difficult to make and needed to cool for hours anyway, bath bombs needed to set in special moulds, and there wasn’t exactly enough time for them to all learn to crochet.

Soap was a possibility if they could get the right base soap to work with, and bubble bath looked almost too easy to be a real option. There was an infinite number of hand lotions, bodywashes, lip balms and shampoos that all claimed to be the best, healthiest and easiest to make. Tris didn’t know how anyone could spend any real amount of time on the internet and still hold out hope for humanity by the end of it.

“Find anything?” Daja asked.

“We’re going to have to ask Rosethorn,” Tris said. 

“Yeah, okay,” said Briar, heaving himself to his feet. “I’ll ask.” He paused. “What are we asking?”

“I’ll go. I can ask myself, since I’m the one who knows the question,” Tris told him.

He snorted and sat back down. “So you’re not scared of her. You just didn’t want to go outside before.”

“Everything’s wet,” Tris pointed out. “It’s been raining.”

“Even more pathetic.”

“I think we could make soap,” said Tris. “You just melt a bar down in the microwave, add whatever you want and then cool it down again.”

“Adding what?” said Daja. “Soap is soap.”

“Aloe vera and shit,” said Briar. “Rosethorn makes the soap we use, you know. She puts stuff in it.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Daja, surprised. “That’s – I didn’t know that.”

“Well she’s always on about looking after your skin and everything.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever come across a bar of aloe vera and shit soap in the cupboard, though,” said Daja, grinning now. “Is that medicinal?”

“Not my fault you take all kinds of stupid shit literally,” said Briar. 

“We’ll have moulds, then,” said Tris. “Good.” 

“Mould soap,” said Briar with a grin. “Delicious.”

Tris left him to his lunacy and went and knocked on Rosethorn’s door. She didn’t exactly like the thought of disturbing Rosethorn, it was true, but to say she was _scared_ was typical exaggeration on Briar’s part. Rosethorn wasn’t scary, she was just a little daunting at times.

After a few seconds the door opened, and Rosethorn was standing there. “Yes?”

“We want to make something for Sandry, and we thought we might make her some soaps. Would it be okay if we did?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Rosethorn, coming out of the room and closing the door behind her. “I’ll see what we have.”

As they went back out towards the kitchen, they also came into earshot of the brainstorming session that was going on.

“Milo soap.”

“Soup soap.”

“Rope soap.”

Any criticism of Briar and Daja’s lack of helpfulness went out of Tris’s mind when she saw Lark was in the kitchen now, ladling soup into two big bowls on a tray. _How is it all going?_ she wanted to ask. _How’s Sandry?_ But the words, for whatever reason, wouldn’t come out of her.

“She’s nearly halfway done,” said Lark, pulling the breadknife out of its stand. “It’s all going well.”

“Dope soap,” Briar mumbled under his breath.

Rosethorn walked off down the corridor – to check on her soap supplies, Tris hoped.

“Is it on?” Daja asked.

“I think so,” Tris answered.

“Can I have a bit?” asked Briar, who was intently watching Lark slice a big loaf of crusty bread. “I mean can I please have a bit?”

“You can all help yourselves,” said Lark. “It’s an early lunch, but soup doesn’t stay warm forever, and I think it’ll be nicest when it’s fresh. Just let me finish putting these together, and I’ll get out of your way.”

Rosethorn came back with about a dozen bars of soap in her hands and put them down in the middle of the kitchen table. “This is how much soap base we have in the house at the moment,” she said. “Have a look at them and see what you think. I’ll serve lunch.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Tris was so easy to put into feelings, and so hard to put into words. On the surface, she was all scorn and distrust and crackling anger, using heavy scowls and sharp words to keep the world away from her when she was hurting. There was danger in her, and Sandry couldn’t shy away from that, and she didn’t _want_ to shy away from it. That was the Tris that she knew and loved, and without it the weaving wouldn’t be complete.

But there were plenty of other parts of Tris as well, that were just as important. There was her strength, her determination, her ambition, her absolute refusal to change herself so that the world might go more smoothly around her. There were the secret gentle parts, which buried themselves deep around most humans and grew ten times bigger around animals, who could never hurt her in the ways that hurt most. She was always thinking, and she was so smart, and if she trusted you she would help you, and if she decided to help you, hell would freeze over before she gave up on you. This Sandry knew.

Sandry knew these things about Tris that hardly anyone else on the planet was ever allowed to know, and every part of Tris went into every row of the weaving until the shuttle was empty and the job was done and she cleared her mind once again, to put the border in so Tris’s magic was locked in on both sides. _Halfway_ , she thought, closing her eyes and sending the shuttle backwards and forwards. _This is halfway._

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 _Halfway_ , Sandry thought, setting down the empty shuttle. _Halfway done means only half to go._ She looked for Lark, wanting to know the time, but apart from Sandry the room was empty. 

Well, whatever the clock time happened to be, it was most definitely lunchtime as far as Sandry was concerned. She’d been at least a couple of hours on Briar’s stripe between yesterday and today, and now she’d done Tris’s as well, so if it wasn’t midday already, it had to be close.

The door to the workroom opened. Lark stood in the doorway holding a tray in both hands and using one leg to keep Little Bear from charging into the room in front of her – something which used to be easy when Little Bear had truly been little, but was getting harder and harder every day. 

Sandry jumped up and went over, kneeling down so she was on the same level as Little Bear and Lark had just enough room to walk around her. “Hello!” she said to the puppy, but when he lurched forward towards her face with his tongue out, she put on her sternest voice and said, “No!”

He tried to run around her then, but Lark appeared again to block the way.

“Can’t he come in just for lunchtime?” Sandry asked, looking up at Lark.

“No, he can’t,” said Lark. She bent down to give Little Bear a rub around the ears and said, “Go and bother Rosie. Go on. There’s a good boy.”

Between the two of them they got the door closed again, and after a moment Sandry heard him trotting off back towards the kitchen.

“I thought we’d have lunch in here today,” said Lark, leading Sandry back to the table, where she’d laid down the tray. There were two bowls of big chunky vegetable soup and a round flat loaf of bread cut into half a dozen thick slices, with butter on the side of the plate. “What do you think?”

“Isn’t it proper lunchtime?” Sandry asked, her stomach rumbling fiercely at the sight and the smell. “What time is it?”

“It’s about a quarter past twelve,” said Lark.

Sandry frowned. “Then why not eat in the kitchen?”

Lark’s flashed her a grin. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Oh.” Sandry didn’t really understand, but she was hungry enough to put off her questions until after she’d eaten. “Thank you for this,” she said, moving her chair from its spot in front of the loom so she could sit right beside Lark.

“It’s not my doing,” Lark said, shifting her own chair sideways to make room for Sandry. “The kitchen has been very busy this morning.”

“Ohhh,” said Sandry, savouring the aroma of the soup as she thought over the hint. “Did they make a very big mess, then?”

Lark winced, but Sandry could tell it was for play by the big smile that quickly followed it. “I’ve already said too much.” She dipped her spoon into her soup and sipped on the broth, and Sandry followed her lead.

It was nice soup, and luckily it wasn’t so hot that Sandry had to go slowly. After she’d gone over the surface and crunched all the bits of spring onion, she started fishing out and eating the big vegetable chunks. It wouldn’t take her more than twenty minutes to eat this, go to the toilet and be back in ready to start on the next stripe.

But Lark had other ideas. First she asked Sandry about the state of her schoolwork, which wasn’t as bad as it could be but was still pretty bad. She’d meant to do quite a lot of work yesterday, but even if she hadn’t suddenly had to do a major working of magic, she probably wouldn’t have gotten it all done. There was a lot of maths exercises to do, and the speech for English, and the report about ecosystems, and she was supposed to have chosen a poem to read aloud in class as well, but she hadn’t gotten around to starting the book yet. 

Lark said she’d to talk to Ms O’Brien to explain why Sandry was so behind, so she wouldn’t get in trouble, but Sandry still would have to catch up, of course, so Lark helped her make a little timetable for how she could do the work in bits and pieces and catch up steadily instead of trying to do it all in one go, like Sandry would usually do.

By the time they’d finished doing that, Sandry had finished her soup and there was only breadcrumbs left on the plate. But before Sandry could think of standing up and moving her chair back, Lark wanted to know if Sandry had any ideas for Tris’s birthday next month, and whether she thought Tris would rather eat out at a restaurant or have a party at the house and invite people over.

The answer was a party at the house, of course, but the question was how big to make it. Tris didn’t like to be too much the centre of attention, but if it was done in the right way then Sandry knew they could all throw a party that Tris would really enjoy. It was just about inviting the right people and doing things Tris liked to do. Sandry would have to think about what kind of games Tris would like to play – not games that were the normal kind of fun for parties but ones where you could sit quietly and win by being clever. Mastermind, Sandry supposed, or maybe Scrabble. Brain games.

When Lark eventually gathered up the bowls and the plates and put them back on the tray and went out to “look for some dish washers”, Sandry ducked quickly out to use the bathroom. When she came back in, her half-woven cloth was there waiting for her, and Sandry couldn’t help sighing again. It had been nice to chat with Lark, and Sandry did feel a lot more human after doing it, but it made it even more harder now to redirect her thoughts from homework and party planning to what was going to be the hardest stripe she’d have to weave today: her own.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

It would be easy, Sandry thought, to say that because the four of them had been spun together, she knew her three friends as well as she knew herself. That was one way to get across the idea of how deep and how real the connection between them all was. It was the kind of thing people said, generally.

But sitting here with shuttle in hand, faced with the task of weaving her own stripe into the cloth, Sandry suspected that in fact, she knew them better. She hadn’t had this horrible mental blank when it came to Briar or Tris. She’d hardly had to think, really, just gone straight ahead with it, and the magic had flowed.

Sandry gritted her teeth and tried to think about herself. Who was she? What a completely impossible question. She must have done this before, or something like it, when she’d spun them all together in the first place, but that had been different. They’d been in mortal peril, and Sandry hadn’t really thought particularly much about anything she was doing. Not properly, not like this. 

But she refused to get stuck. She slid the shuttle in through the warp threads, focusing on her feelings of duty, responsibility, protection. That was part of her magic, and it was something she was determined would always be a part of her. She thought about friendship and loyalty, and then, like a ball of yarn unwinding, out flooded echoes of loneliness, desperation, sadness, fear. Sandry knew how awful it was to be drifting, disconnected, never knowing where to call home. Her magic was all about connection and creation, and the joys in her life were the connections between people, the making of things that would last. That was how you made the world a better place. You had to work and build and never give up. You lost people, and it broke your heart, but you kept going.

Before Sandry knew it, her shuttle was empty and it was time to close herself in with a border. She left all herself and her magic in the stripe she’d just woven and took up the second-last cotton shuttle, putting up a clear, empty wall between herself and Daja to come.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The thought of making something nice for Sandry was a good one, Daja knew. She’d been working very hard for nearly two days now, all on her own, without complaining once. 

It wasn’t much more than a gesture, this soap-making exercise. Sandry would like it, but then she’d like just about anything anyone decided to do for her. You wouldn’t find a stronger believer than Sandry in the saying, “It’s the thought that counts.” 

Daja suspected the whole project was as much so the three of them would have something to do as it was for Sandry’s benefit, and that was how Daja was approaching it. It passed the time, and it would put a smile on Sandry’s face. It was valuable in that way, and that was enough for Daja.

The first surprise had been when Rosethorn had brought out all the rest of her supplies: a collection of dozens of little bottles and sachets, half a dozen different moulds, a few steel bowls and measuring spoons and a little scale. Daja had always thought Rosethorn was a sensible, practical woman. When Briar said that she handmade their soap, Daja had decided it was some kind of cost-saving thing, or a commitment to organics, or there was just a particular kind that she liked that wasn’t available in shops.

But this was something else. Rosethorn had Briar go through all the oils and herbs and essences and whatever else she had, reading the names out and telling Tris and Daja what they were, and if he didn’t know, then Rosethorn would explain it. Tris listened to everything intently. Daja was sure that if there was a quiz on it later, she would be getting an A.

Daja might just scrape a pass. To her, only a very few stood out. She had frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood and lavender in her incense collection, and she already knew what they symbolised. She knew Sandry particularly liked the lavender, and it was supposed to promote peace and calm, and so Daja had already decided that was the kind of soap she was going to make. 

The second surprise was how seriously and carefully Briar went about making his decision, after his joking around earlier on. It might have been Rosethorn’s influence, or perhaps he was thinking of Sandry, but he went back and forward between bottles, testing their scents, setting them up in different combinations, conferring with Rosethorn, making adjustments, shaking his head and starting all over again.

When Tris and Rosethorn were busy discussing the difference between lemon balm and lemongrass, Daja took her chance. “Is it so very important exactly what you put into it?” she asked quietly.

Briar stopped spinning the little bottle of sandalwood oil around on the bench. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

He looked at her with a surprised little frown. “Funny question coming from you, with your shrine and your incense and all.”

“That’s –” Daja stopped. What _was_ that? “It’s ritual,” she said. “It’s mourning.” _It’s habit_ , she thought, and was mortified at the thought.

“Well this is literally magic,” he said. “You’ve got Rosethorn’s power all through this shit, you know.”

Oh. _Oh._

“Lavender’s a good call, but,” Briar went on, looking at the buds and the oil Daja had sitting in front of her. “You want the purple dye too? Use the milk base and you can get a bright purple, I bet.”

“Or you could use honey,” said Rosethorn. “And gold.”

Daja didn’t know how it was possible for her to keep _forgetting_ about magic. It shouldn’t be possible, after all this time. But it kept popping up in places she didn’t expect, blurring lines that Daja hadn’t even realised existed in her mind. Science, magic, religion, science, magic, religion. She really needed to start going back to church and figuring some of these things out.

“I think milk, please,” she said to Rosethorn.

“If you’re going to go lavender, go super-lavender,” Briar said approvingly. 

“We’ll start, then,” Rosethorn said, passing a chunk of plain white soap to Daja. “First, this goes into the microwave.”

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

There was a kind of completeness about Daja that made it a bit of a challenge to starting off her stripe. She wasn’t a person who came in bits and pieces that needed linking together. She was a girl far from home, however much she loved her new family here, and so she carried her home with her all the time. She held on tightly to her identity, with all the shades and subtleties that mattered so much to her and were invisible to just about everyone around her. She held herself accountable to her own good judgement, her friends, her family, her ancestors, her country, and to God in heaven, and Sandry knew she would never let any of them down.

Her magic was hot and heavy, and old. There was enormous strength in it, like there was in Daja herself, but no violence. She didn’t want to hurt or harm or destroy. She wanted things to work. She saw the world, and she weighed it up in her mind, and she settled on the plan of action she thought best. She prioritised, and anyone or anything that ended up being one of Daja’s priorities was lucky beyond belief. There was nothing changeable or fickle about Daja Kisubo, and Sandry was one of the luckiest girls in the world to be able to call her a friend.

When the stripe was done, Sandry put down Daja’s shuttle and picked up the last cotton one, feeling a kind of whirling disbelief that the job was all but over. This time was the hardest of all to discipline her mind, and it took every last bit of willpower Sandry had to fight back the relief and the triumph and the collapse until the final border was finished.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Sandry sat back and looked at her work through bleary eyes. Four clean, distinct strips of coloured, slightly glowing silk with dull white cotton separating them. It was so plain, so small a thing sitting there in front of her.

She ran her eyes slowly over Daja, herself, Tris, Briar. They couldn’t all blend into each other any more, but despite Sandry’s best efforts no stripe was truly monochrome. If you looked closely, which Sandry’s eyes were too tired for her to do for very long, there were little bits of colour here and there through every stripe. Sandry hadn’t been able to help that, but the important thing was the plain white borders she’d put in had stayed plain white borders, straight and firm.

“I did it,” she whispered. “I did it?”

“You did it,” said Lark softly, pressing a cup of water into her hands. 

Sandry drank it, so tired she could barely focus her eyes enough to see Lark’s expression. When she’d finished it, she just held the cup in her hands until Lark took it from her again.

“I can’t tell you how impressed I am,” Lark said. “You were magnificent.”

“I don’t feel magnificent,” Sandry said. “I feel about one-third dead.”

“Here, see if this helps,” said Lark, taking Sandry’s hand and moving it until it rested just above her stripe. “Are you ready?”

Sandry nodded, and when Lark let go of her hand, she lowered it gently onto the yellow stripe, and in a fraction of a second, she was whole again, and everything about the world was a bit brighter. She wiggled her fingers and her toes, as if somehow the magic had run physically through her and might need some help making it all the way to the ends. It was a nonsense thought, but that was nothing new to Sandry.

The world was brighter, but that just made it all the harder to look at through Sandry’s weary eyes. “I’m going to fall asleep sitting here,” she mumbled.

“I can help you back to your room,” said Lark. “Or I’ve brought a beanbag down, if you want to nap here.”

“Beanbag,” said Sandry. Her room was a world away.

Lark half encouraged, half lifted Sandry out of her seat and pointed her at the beanbag slumped over in front of all Lark’s wicker baskets, about five steps away.

Sandry managed each step under her own power, crawled into the beanbag, curled up and was dead to the world.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

“It’s still mixed,” said Daja, looking at a twist of green at the bottom of her stripe.

“You are mixed, the four of you,” said Lark. “There’s no escaping it.”

Daja looked at Sandry, fast asleep with her mouth slightly open. Over there on the other side of the room, curled up down around the floor level, she looked so tiny. “I suppose she’s bigger on the inside,” she said, as if that somehow explained any of it. As if anything could possibly explain Sandry.

“So are we doing this or what?” said Briar, hovering right behind Daja and nudging her in the side. “I’m just about done waiting.”

“Give me one last moment of peace,” Daja said, elbowing him back.

“Briar, step back, please,” said Lark.

Daja felt him move away. She took another look at the cloth and all the traces of green, yellow and blue in her stripe. She looked at Sandry, sound asleep. 

There was nothing for it. Daja laid her hand onto her stripe, gently but firmly, and it was warm to the touch. Her chest was warm, her head was warm, the blood pumping through her body was warm. She hadn’t even realised how cold she’d gotten.

“Did it work? Are you done?”

Daja smiled and had to put in a bit of effort not to tear up. “Yes,” she said, and moved out of the way. Lark laid a hand on her upper arm, met her eyes and then drew her into a hug. 

_Thank you, thank you, thank you_ , Daja said, though she knew Sandry was sleeping far too deeply to hear it. She stood hugging Lark for a good few moments, until Briar spoke up.

 _Hey,_ he said. _Long time no see._

He was bursting with energy, almost wild with it. Daja stepped out of Lark’s arms and went over to him, not even knowing what she was thinking of doing. He quickly put a fist up, apparently thinking she was threatening a hug, and so she gave him the fistbump he was looking for. 

Together, they turned to look at Tris, who was looking over the cloth carefully, still not touching it.

“C’mon, Blue,” said Briar. “You’ll feel a million bucks.”

“I’m just thinking,” Tris said.

“Why?”

“I like to, every now and then.”

“There’s a time and a place, but.”

Daja stood quietly and stretched out her magic, the world finally complete around her. Then she remembered her promise and quickly pulled out her phone. She didn’t know if Frostpine would still be working or not, and she didn’t want to stress him out with a missed call, so she just texted: “It’s back, I feel great” and a big smiley face emoji. He’d call, probably, when he got the message, or maybe even come over. 

_You’re further away than before_ , Tris commented, still with her eyes fixed on Sandry’s weaving. _Don’t you think?_

Daja had actually been thinking something similar. It was too soon to tell for good, probably, but it had been a little odd that none of Briar’s exuberance had really bled over into her. She was aware of it, but she wasn’t _in_ it. 

_Well?_ said Tris. _Don’t you think?_ She finally looked away from the loom and at Briar and Daja. 

“I did think about it,” Daja said, a slow smile coming across her face. “I guess you didn’t hear me.”

The corners of Tris’s mouth turned up, and she nodded. “I thought so.”

“Is everything all right?” Lark asked, a note of concern in her voice.

“Peachy,” said Briar. “I’m going outside for a bit.”

“Hang on,” said Daja. “What about Sandry’s present?”

“It’s gonna be yonks till she wakes up,” Briar pointed out. “Just leave it for when she does.”

“Everything’s good,” Tris said to Lark. “It’s less intense than it was before. It’s better.”

“That’s wonderful news,” said Lark, with a little sigh and a big smile. “I’m delighted for you all.”

“Sandry’s a dead set legend,” said Briar. “Now I’m going out.”

“All right,” said Lark. “I’ll take charge of the basket, if you like, and I’ll make sure she sees it as soon as she’s awake to.”

“Thank you,” said Tris. “I think I’ll go outside for a bit as well.”

Lark nodded. Briar dashed out of the room, and Tris followed him at her normal plodding pace. Daja’s phone vibrated in her pocket. “Thank you,” she said to Lark, and ducked out to take the call.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Sandry woke up very, very slowly. For a good long time, she wondered why her bed had gone so soft and crumbly, until she finally moved her legs around enough to hear the rustle of the beanbag she was curled up in. She forced her eyes open and decided she would completely ignore the dull headache hovering right behind her forehead. 

Lark was sitting up at the workbench. Her laptop was open and on, but she was sitting turned sideways and looking down towards Sandry, a big smile on her face. “Good evening, sleepyhead.”

“Good evening,” Sandry mumbled, wiping sleep out of her eyes and struggling to sit up properly. Her mouth was so dry.

“Have a look down to your left,” Lark suggested, then turned back to her computer.

Sandry sat groggily for a moment before following Lark’s instruction. There was a basket sitting beside the beanbag, covered in pink cellophane, except there hadn’t been quite enough cellophane and there was a gap in one corner between the handle and the rim.

“Is that for me?”

“So I’m told.”

Sandry reached out and pulled off the cellophane, which hadn’t really been properly attached in the first place. There were three mesh bags inside there, each one full of – soap?

There was a little rectangular card on each bag as well. Sandry picked up the first bag. On one side the card said “Sandry” in Tris’s block capital letters. Sandry flipped it over and read: “Dear Sandry. The soap is lemon balm and orange. Thank you for your hard work. Tris.”

There was a lump in Sandry’s throat by the time she finished reading. There were four bars of soap in the bag, and when Sandry lifted it to her nose she could smell the citrus. 

The soap in the next bag was very purple, and Sandry knew before she even smelled it or looked at the card that it was lavender and that it was from Daja. She didn’t want to cry, since that would just make it harder to read the note, but she could feel it starting, from the back of her throat and up behind her eyes. 

“Dear Sandry,” Daja wrote. “We all wanted to make you something to say thank you, and Rosethorn has a lot of ingredients to make soap from (!!?), but I knew this was the only real choice I had. <3 Daja”

Sandry sniffed and put Daja’s and Tris’s bags back in the basket. She couldn’t identify the smell of the ones Briar had made, so she reached for the card and flipped it over.

“Sandry,” it said in Briar’s very slow, careful print. The writing was so straight, she wondered if he’d ruled lines in pencil and then rubbed them out afterwards, like she’d seen him do with some of his schoolwork. “When you run out of this I’ll make some with my own magic in it and not Rosethorns. Its sandalwood and rose. Its the first smell I remember from anywhere. Sorry the colors a bit weird. Briar.”

Sandry put the bag carefully down with the others and wiped the tears off her cheeks, but more just kept on rolling down.

“All right?” said Lark.

“Yes,” said Sandry, sniffing. 

She closed her eyes and reached out, finding Tris upstairs, Briar in the kitchen and Daja out by the carport. _Thank you,_ she said, wiping some more tears off her cheeks. _Thank you so much._

 _Hey, right back at ya,_ said Briar. _Want me to bring a drink? Or food?_

 _I’ll be in in two seconds,_ said Daja. _Frostpine’s just leaving. It’s so good to hear you again!_

Tris didn’t say anything. She just got up from her desk and went straight out her bedroom door.

Sandry breathed in a shaky breath, out and then in again. _Just some water, please,_ she said to Briar. _Thank you._

_You got it._

Sandry tried to sort herself out to stand up but didn’t get very far until Lark came over to pull her to her feet. She felt a bit dizzy for a moment, but it passed.

“They’re coming?” said Lark.

Sandry grinned, hearing quick footsteps coming down the corridor. “Yep,” she said. “They are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end again! Thanks everyone for your comments and your kudos, it's been super fun to share another piece of this story with you all :)
> 
> In a way, this story is really a coda and a resolution to Circle Updated, and I think any future writing I do in this universe might start off somewhere different, with the possibility of venturing quite a lot further from canon. I couldn't say for sure, though, and I don't know if/when another instalment will find its way into this series.
> 
> But of course, it would never have gotten even this far without readers and commenters, and I thank you all very much for your support and your readership. It's a real privilege to write for you all <3
> 
> So bye for now, and happy new year!


End file.
